Adriaen van der Werff

Adriaen van der Werff began his career as a genre painter (scenes of everyday life). However, he changed direction after studying prints after Italian artists such as Raphael and admiring the work of Gerard Lairesse in Amsterdam. He turned to what was the highest ranked artistic category, namely history painting: representations of stories from the Bible and Classical mythology.

Adriaen van der Werff was a fijnschilder (fine painter). His meticulous and detailed paintings are as smooth as glass, not a single brushstroke can be seen. He seems to have wanted to depict every single hair, leaf and blade of grass.

Adriaen van der Werff’s ideal world is beautiful and devoid of all ugliness. He believed that everyday life should not be uncritically painted as such, but always be embellished. His point of reference were the sculptures from Classical antiquity, then considered the pinnacle of beauty.

For every day that Van der Werff worked on a painting, he recorded a dash in a notebook. The total number of dashes determined what the cost would be. He spent nineteen and his brother Pieter two and a half weeks on God Holds Adam and Eve Responsible. The final price: 3500 guilders.

Pieter van der Werff, Adriaen’s younger brother, was also a painter. He worked for himself, but even more often for his famous brother. Although signed by Adriaen, the painting with a dancing nymph was largely Pieter’s work.

Van der Werff painted a dashing self-portrait at the age of forty. Hanging around his neck is a costly gold chain that he had received a year earlier from his patron, the Elector Palatine. He holds a small picture of his wife and muse Margaretha van Rees and their only daughter Maria.

Adriaen van der Werff liked to use his wife as a model. She can be recognized as the shepherdess in A Couple Making Love in a Park. According to Van der Werff’s son-in-law, as a staunch classicist, the artist transformed everything ‘modern’ about her in line with Classical sculptures.

Van der Werff was a master in painting nudes. Looking at his piquant depictions, the viewer almost feels like a voyeur. In A Couple Making Love in a Park this experience is further reinforced by the difficult to discern children spying on the lovers from the bushes.

Adriaen van der Werff was court painter to Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine, from 1697 onwards. He received an annuity and was also paid royally for each painting he produced. In 1703 the Elector even ennobled him with a knighthood. From that moment on he proudly signed as ‘chevalier Van der Werff.’

In his spare time Van der Werff was an avid chess player. He took pleasure in carving the chess pieces needed for the game himself. That he was almost as good a sculptor as he was a painter is evident from this pawn in the form of a laughing soldier, the only chess piece by Van der Werff that has been preserved.