Pieter Claesz

PIETER CLAESZ. Berchem c.1597 – 1660 Haarlem Pieter Claesz. (Pieter Claeszoon, Pieter Claessen) was born about 1597 in Berchem, a village near Antwerp, and died in 1660 towards the end of December in Haarlem. He was buried on 1st January 1661 in the graveyard of the Nieuwe Kerk in Haarlem. It is likely that he received his training as a painter in Antwerp with Osias Beert and Clara Peeters, whose style he appeared to follow in his early works. Around 1620/22 he moved to Haarlem, where he seems to have received inspiration from Floris van Dijck and the members of the copper engravers’ family Matham. His son Claes, born in 1622 in Haarlem, was later a successful painter of Italianate landscapes, and took as his surname the birthplace of his father (Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem). The name of Pieter Claesz.’s wife, who gave birth to two girls as well as Nicolaes, is unknown. After the death of his first wife, in 1635 the painter remarried, and twin girls were born of this marriage; when they were twelve, after the death of their father, who had obviously been widowed a second time, they entered the orphanage in Haarlem. Over a period of about forty years - between 1621 and 1660 - Pieter Claesz. produced some 270 pictures, with a few exceptions all signed with his monogram and in the main nearly all dated. His still-lifes, filled with light and lustre, ensure his place among the best in his profession in Holland in the seventeenth century.