Jan van der Heyden

Infobox Person
name = Jan van der Heiden

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image_size = 225px
caption =
birth_date = birth date|1637|3|5|mf=y
birth_place = Gorinchem
death_date = death date and age|1712|3|28|1637|3|5|mf=y
death_place = Amsterdam
occupation = Artist, glass grinder
spouse = Sarah Terhiel
parents = Jan Goriszoon, Neeltje Jans Munster
children = Jan, Samuel, Sarah

Jan van der Heyden (March 5, 1637, Gorinchem – March 28, 1712, Amsterdam) was a Dutch Baroque-era painter, draughtsman, printmaker, a mennonite and inventor who significantly contributed to contemporary firefighting. He improved the fire hose in 1672, with his brother Nicolaes, who was a hydraulic engineer. [The fire hose pump was invented by Johann Hautsch, cite news |title= Jan van der Heiden|url= http://www.bc-enschede.nl/wenglish/grassroots/heroesvillains/3tl3_0304/b%C3%B6sing_hageman/jan_van_der_heiden.htm| |publisher= |first= |last= |date= |accessdate= 2007-01-15] He modified the manual fire engines, reorganised the volunteer fire brigade (1685) and wrote and illustrated the first firefighting manual ("Brandspuiten-boek"). A comprehensive street lighting scheme for Amsterdam, which lasted from 1669 until 1840, designed and implemented by Van der Heyden, was adopted as a model by many other towns and abroad.

Biography

Van der Heyden grew up in Gorcum, but the family moved to Amsterdam around 1650. They lived on Dam Square. As a young guy he witnessed the fire in the old townhall which made a deep impression on him. He later would describe or draw 80 fires in almost any neighborhood of Amsterdam. When he married in 1661 the family was living on Herengracht, the most fashionable canal in Amsterdam. In 1668 Cosimo II de' Medici bought one of his paintings, a view of the townhall with a manipulated perspective. Van der Heyden often painted country estates, like Goudestein, owned by Joan Huydecoper II. He was not good in drawing figures and used for his paintings a metal plate for bricks, a sponge or moss for the leaves. Johannes Lingelbach, Adriaen van de Velde und Eglon van der Neer assisted him drawing the figures. Jan van der Heyden also introduced the lamp post and in 1672 impoved the design of the fire engine. He died in wealth as the superintendent of the lighting and director of the (voluntary) firemen's guild at Amsterdam.

Van der Heyden was a contemporary of the landscape painters Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael, with the advantage, which they lacked, of a certain professional versatility; for, whilst they painted admirable pictures and starved, he varied the practice of art with the study of mechanics. Until 1672 he painted in partnership with Adriaen van de Velde. After Adrian's death, and probably because of the loss which that event entailed upon him, he accepted the offices to which allusion has just been made. At no period of artistic activity had the system of division of labour been more fully or more constantly applied to art than it was in Holland towards the close of the 17th century.

Van der Heyden, who was perfect as an architectural draughtsman insofar as he painted the outside of buildings and thoroughly mastered linear perspective, seldom turned his hand to the delineation of anything but brick houses and churches in streets and squares, or rows along canals, or "moated granges," common in his native country.

He was a travelled man, had seen The Hague, Ghent and Brussels, and had ascended the Rhine past Xanten to Cologne, where he copied over and over again the tower and crane of the great cathedral. But he cared nothing for hill or vale, or stream or wood. He could reproduce the rows of bricks in a square of Dutch houses sparkling in the sun, or stunted trees and lines of dwellings varied by steeples, all in light or thrown into passing shadow by moving cloud.

He had the art of painting microscopically without loss of breadth or keeping. But he could draw neither man nor beast, nor ships nor carts; and this was his disadvantage. His good genius under these circumstances was Adrian van der Velde, who enlivened his compositions with spirited figures; and the joint labour of both is a delicate, minute, transparent work, radiant with glow and atmosphere.

Museums with van der Heyden's works

*Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
*Musée du Louvre, Paris
*Amsterdams Historisch Museum, Amsterdam
*Mauritshuis, Royal Cabinet of Paintings, The Hague
*Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
*National Gallery of Art, Washington
*Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
*Detroit Institute of Arts

Exhibitions

The Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in Greenwich, Connecticut, presented "Jan van der Heyden (1637 – 1712)", an exhibition of works by the artist, from September 16, 2006, through January 10, 2007. The exhibit consistsed of 37 of the artist’s cityscape paintings and 16 drawings with supplemental material on Van der Heyden’s publication on firefighting. The exhibition was the first monographic exhibition of van der Heyden’s art to be mounted in 70 years and the first shown ever in the United States, according to the museum. The exhibition will had its only showing in the United States at the Bruce Museum, after which it traveled (in slightly abridged form) to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. [ [http://www.brucemuseum.org/exhibitions/index.php] Bruce Museum Web site, Jan van der Heyden exhibit Web pages, accessed September 9, 2006]

References

* "Jan van der Heyden (1637–1712)" (exhibit catalogue) by Peter C. Sutton, et al., 50 illustrated pages, including 130 paintings, drawings and figures (Yale University Press: 2006). The book is the first publication on the artist in the English language, according to the Bruce Museum, where Sutton is director.
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