Carel Fabritius 

A take-away from our New Year break in Amsterdam – my holiday reading was a poignant book by French actress and author Sylvie Matton called Rembrandt’s Whore  – the story of Rembrandt’s Common-law wife Hendrickje Stoffels .

I imagine that Matton and her painter /film director husband Charles got close to the subject whilst they worked together on their 1999 film Rembrandt – certainly she captures in her novel all of the sad spirituality of the woman that is also visible in Rembrandt’s paintings of his servant, lover and would-be wife.

It also refers to the most famous pupil of Rembrandt – Carel Fabritius – and his extraordinary  talent

This is his most well known and oft reproduced  painting – The Goldfinch –  in which it is evident that his style was by no means a reproduction of his masters but much more full of Dutch light and more reminiscent of Vermeer and de Hooch – although chronologically they are followers of Fabritius not he of them.

The reason that Fabritius is less well known than these followers is simply that his output was very limited – He died in 1654 – aged only 32 – a great loss as it would have been interesting to follow the development in talent of anyone minded to paint such unusual spacial  images as those shown in his view of Delft below.