Godfried Schalcken

Training under Gerrit Dou and Samuel van Hoogstraten is recorded. Justus van Bentum is recorded as having studied under Godfried Schalcken. The recorded working language is Dutch. The field of work recorded is painting. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait. Places of work recorded in the authority are Dordrecht, Leiden and The Hague. Works named in the authority record are Portrait of Stadholder-King William III (1650- 1702), Lady at a Mirror by Candlelight and The Chastity Lesson. Work by Godfried Schalcken is recorded in the collections of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Städel Museum, Museo del Prado, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and J. Paul Getty Museum.

Godfried Schalcken was born in Made, North Brabant, the son of Cornelis Schalcken and Aletta Lydius. Before he was four years old, his family moved to Dordrecht, where his father became rector of the Latin school. Schalcke studied under Samuel van Hoogstraten in Dordrecht before he moved to Leiden, into the studio of Gerard Dou (1613–1675), one of Rembrandt's most famous pupils. His earlier genre pictures very closely resemble Dou's work. He worked in Leiden until c. 1675, then returning to Dordrecht until 1691, after which he settled in The Hague, where he continued to paint until his death in 1706. He also visited England (1692–1697), but his uncouth manners and bad temper alienated him from the society there. In 1703 he was employed by Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine in Düsseldorf. He died in The Hague.

Schalcken painted several portraits, of which the half-length of William III of England, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, is a good example. Like Dou, Schalcken specialized in small scenes lit by candlelight, a format favored by the Leiden fijnschilders. Examples are in Buckingham Palace, the Louvre, Vienna and Dresden. His painting, Lady, Come into the Garden (Buckingham Palace), was singled out by Schalcken's pupil and Dutch artistic biographer Arnold Houbraken as representative of his oeuvre. Other good examples are Old Woman Scouring a Pan and Soldier Giving Money to a Woman (London, National Gallery), Ceres Seeking Proserpine and Old Man Writing (Louvre), Woman (National Museum of Serbia), Girl Blowing Out Taper (Munich), Girl Reading Letter (Dresden Gallery), The Boy Angling (Berlin); and Toilet by Candle (The Hague). The Buckingham Palace collection also possesses an interior by Schalcken. His history paintings are less-well known. His pupils were Arnold Boonen, Godefridus Callenfels, Simon Germain, Carel de Moor, Richard Morris, Arent Pijl, his cousin Jacob Schalcken, his sister Maria Schalcken, and Anthony Vreem.