My top 10 painters
1. Vermeer
Not an original choice of course, almost every painter is interested in Vermeer. He is the first early (17th century) painter whose compositions are really considered beautiful. Moreover, Vermeer’s color is so beautiful, as one enters the Rijksmuseum room where ‘The Woman Reading a Letter’ hangs, one immediately notices the incredible brightness.
2. Dick Ket
Any decent postwar painter has been given a big tick from Ket. That weird obsession with details, the foreign private atmosphere, the melancholy. It probably has to do with his illness and early death, that his paintings have something special.
3. Claeszoon Heda
Pure atmosphere. Beautiful, which monochrome colors that complement each other so softly. Also a painter with a very efficient touch. You can see that the paintings cost him little effort.
4. Degas
This French growler (he was a chagrin) has gradually become one of my favorite painters. Painting such a world with a few brushes, great. Nowhere exaggerating, always deliquescent surprisingly easy. Contemporary French painter Antoine Vincent is one of the few contemporary painters who sometimes comes close.
5. Zurburan
Rural, simple still lifes did this painter create. No one can paint a white egg as Zurburan did. Cees Nooteboom is also Zurburanfan and has written a very nice book about him that I can recommend to anyone.
6. Camille Corot
Really 19th century, when I’m in France and I see the Limousin, I always think of Corot. That silvery light. Try to paint so much light with so little color. Truly a master of grays.
7. Siméon Chardin
Beautiful name. This nonchalance of these paintings, while Chardin still worked laborious, it seems. The summary light, but Chardin also knows how to capture the drama of a shot hare beautifully.
8. Jan van Tongeren
I am very envious of this kind of quiet, deliberate painters. Strip tight are the still lifes of Van Tongeren. It’s time for a major museum presentation of his work. Very good material expression.
9. Raoul Hynckes
Of all the 20th-century painters Hynckes seems to paint the most from a theoretical program. Mortality and beauty are painted in a dramatic light. Hynckes stylizes beautifully. As with Helmantel, Hynckes’ affinity with the 17th-century artists is evident.
10. Balthasar van der Ast
Not even technically excellent, but so sweet and small. His shells and berries, small bowls and butterflies take you to a wonderful paradise.
