A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

1132. THE VESTIBULE OF A LIBRARY.

Hendrick Steenwyck, the younger (Flemish: 1580-1649).

The elder painter of this name was one of the first to give us those architectural interiors, which later became a specialty among various painters (see Havard's Dutch School, p. 53). His son, the younger Steenwyck, adopted the same line of art. He came to London before 1629, and was much employed in supplying architectural backgrounds to the royal portraits by Van Dyck and to other pictures. He died in London after 1649.

A picture for architects to look at. It is the interior of a vestibule giving access to a library, and is full of inventiveness. Notice, too, how beautifully the accessories—the tablecloth, the vase of flowers, etc., are painted.