Hendrick Bogaert - The Card Players

Oil on panel, 51.5 by 32.5 cms
Signed
 
Biography of the artist 
Hendrik (also spelled Hendrick) Hendricksz.
 
Bogaert was a Dutch painter active primarily in Amsterdam in the mid-seventeenth century. He is known for intimate and animated genre interiors depicting scenes of conviviality, music, and merrymaking. His work belongs to the tradition of merry company painting, characterised by lively social interaction and a keen observation of human expression and gesture.
 
Bogaert was born in Amsterdam, probably between 1626 and 1632, the son of a woodworker (who likely originated from Bremen in Germany), and appears to have spent much of his life in the city. On 10 February 1657 he posted marriage banns with Marritjen Centen; at that time he was living on the Reguliersbreestraat, in the house known as De Drie Koeyekaesen. His brother Hans was his best man at the wedding. By the time of his wife’s burial in December 1673, he was residing in the Wagenstraat¹.
Active from around 1650 to at least 1675, Bogaert painted genre scenes featuring peasants and townsfolk gathered in tavern or farm interiors, frequently animated by musicians and drinkers, and capturing moments of leisure in seventeenth-century Dutch life. He also occasionally produced both portraits as well as still lifes, depicting carcasses, vegetables, and domestic utensils. In 1672 he gave drawing lessons to Joseph Mulder, who later became a distinguished copper engraver².
 
According to Arnold Houbraken, Bogaert spent his final years in the Gasthuis (almshouse) in Rotterdam, suggesting that he may have moved there following the death of his wife.³
 
By 1933, only two paintings by Bogaert were known to the eminent art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, as recorded in his personal fiches. One of these, described in an old auction catalogue, is a particularly tender composition depicting an elderly couple affectionately holding hands, a moment of quiet intimacy that adds emotional depth to the artist’s oeuvre.Bogaert’s paintings display stylistic affinities with those of Adriaen van Ostade, Jan Miense Molenaer, and Jan Steen, artists similarly renowned for capturing the warmth and humour of everyday Dutch life.
 
Although many of his works are abraded, a fate shared by numerous seventeenth-century Dutch paintings owing to their thin and delicate brushwork, the surviving examples in good condition provide compelling visual evidence that Hendrik Hendricksz. Bogaert was a skilled and accomplished painter.
 
1. Thieme–Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, vol. 4 (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1910), p. 215.
2. Arnold Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen, 3 vols. (Amsterdam: Jan van Gorp, 1718–1721), vol. 3, p. 45.
3. Ibid.