Artistic talent often runs in the blood. That was certainly the case with the De Bray family, a clan of devout Catholic painters active in Haarlem in north Holland during the heyday of the Dutch Golden Age. In all likelihood, you won’t have come across the De Brays, who have been eclipsed by their more famous rivals working in Holland during the 17th century, such as Vermeer, Rembrandt and Frans Hals. In overviews of Dutch painting, art historians rarely devote more than a few cursory lines to the De Brays – if they mention them at all.

Jael with her tent peg in Jael, Deborah and Barak by Salomon de Bray
Jael with her tent peg in Jael, Deborah and Barak by Salomon de Bray.

Recently, though, there has been a flicker of renewed interest in their work. Washington’s National Gallery of Art held a small show devoted to the paintings of Jan de Bray (c.1627-97) in 2005, while several pictures by Jan, as well as one by his father Salomon (1597-1664), were included in last year’s blockbuster about Dutch portraiture in the age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals at the National Gallery in London.

Following the success of the latter show, Dulwich Picture Gallery decided to host a more extensive exhibition showcasing the work of both Salomon and Jan, as well as a smattering of immaculate still lifes by Jan’s younger brothers, Joseph and Dirck. When plague rampaged through Haarlem in the spring of 1664, it decimated the De Brays, killing off most of the family apart from Jan and Dirck.

The first room is devoted to the versatile paterfamilias Salomon, a talented jack-of-all-trades who was born in Amsterdam but had moved to Haarlem by 1616, where he made his name as an accomplished history painter, poet, architect and silversmith. There is a fine pair of his paintings depicting murderous Old Testament heroines: Judith, who decapitated the lecherous Assyrian commander Holofernes after infiltrating his camp; and Jael, who hammered a tent peg through the head of the Canaanite commander Sisera to help liberate the Israelites.
advertisement

In both works, the half-length figures are dramatically lit against a dark background in the manner of Caravaggio, suggesting that Salomon was stylistically indebted to those artists working in the Dutch city of Utrecht who were in thrall to the punchy chiaroscuro of the Italian master. Jael’s creamy young flesh is deliberately contrasted with the furrowed skin of an aged prophetess praying behind her: the old woman is so wrinkled that her face appears to be covered with a pelt of yellow hair.

The rest of the show is mostly devoted to the portraits and history paintings of Salomon’s gifted son Jan, whose creativity was clearly stifled by his successful father during the 1650s. A large canvas from 1652 depicts the famous banquet of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, during which the Egyptian queen won a bet with her lover that she could spend a fortune of 10 million sesterces during a single feast. She won the wager by dissolving one of her priceless pearl earrings in a glass of vinegar and drinking it.

To make the picture, Jan used members of his family as models. Dominating the middle of the composition is Salomon as the Roman general, crowned with a laurel wreath (the mark of honour for artists and poets as well as warlords). There is no record of what Jan’s mother made of being asked to dress up as an infamous ruler with a somewhat sluttish reputation. No matter: Charles II liked the painting, and it was in the possession of the English king by 1688. By the early 1660s, Jan started to come into his own – but he still had another domineering alpha male to contend with: the redoubtable Haarlem-based artist Frans Hals, one of the most stylish portrait painters the world had ever seen. While Hals was famous for the flaunting, flickering swagger of his brushwork, Jan favoured a smoother, more restrained and highly classical technique.

As a result, his group portraits of Holland’s wealthy burghers suffer horribly when compared to those by Hals: Jan’s feel clumpy and static, while Hals’s are spontaneous, mischievous and light. Tellingly, Jan produced his best work when he allowed himself to loosen up a little, in the mode of his Haarlem rival: his breezy 1663 portrait of the printer and newspaper publisher Abraham Casteleijn and his young wife is indebted to Hals’s vigorous and sexy double portrait of the newly married Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen, painted nearly 40 years earlier.

The dates are revealing: while the De Brays are touted as accomplished exponents of Dutch classicism, they were not artistic innovators. The Dulwich exhibition will intrigue anyone with an interest in 17th-century Dutch art, but do not expect revelations. Vermeer may have been forgotten about until he was rediscovered in 1866, but the De Brays have been forgotten for a reason. Holland was dripping with artists during the Golden Age, but not all of them were blessed with the spark of genius. telegraph.co.uk

Related Posts