Ferdinand Bol

Biography

Ferdinand was born in Dordrecht as the son of a surgeon, Balthasar Bol. Ferdinand Bol was first an apprentice of Jacob Cuyp in his hometown and/or of Abraham Bloemaert in Utrecht. After 1630, he studied with Rembrandt, living in his house in Sint Antoniesbreestraat, then a fashionable street and area for painters, jewellers, architects, and many Flemish and Jewish immigrants. In 1641, Bol started his own studio.

In 1652, he became a burgher of Amsterdam, and in 1653, he married Elisabeth Dell, whose father held positions with the Admiralty of Amsterdam and the wine merchants' guild, both institutions that later gave commissions to the artist. Within a few years (1655), he became the head of the guild and received orders to deliver two chimney pieces for rooms in the new town hall designed by Jacob van Campen, and four more for the Admiralty of Amsterdam.

Around this time, Bol was a popular and successful painter. His palette had lightened, his figures possessed greater elegance, and by the middle of the decade he was receiving more official commissions than any other artist in Amsterdam. Godfrey Kneller was his pupil. Bol delivered four paintings for the two mansions of the brothers Trip, originally also from Dordrecht.

Bol's first wife died in 1660. In 1669, Bol married for the second time to Anna van Erckel, widow of the treasurer of the Admiralty, and apparently retired from painting at that point in his life. In 1672, the couple moved to Keizersgracht 672, then a newly designed part of the city, and now the Museum Van Loon. Bol served as a governor in a Home for Lepers. Bol died a few weeks after his wife, on Herengracht, where his son, a lawyer, lived.

Probably his best known painting is a portrait of Elisabeth Bas, the wife of the naval officer Joachim Swartenhondt and an innkeeper near the Dam square. This and many other of his paintings would in the 19th century be falsely attributed to his master Rembrandt.

Gallery (selected works)

File:ElisabethBas.jpeg|Portrait of Elisabeth Bas, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam File:Ferdinand Bol 004.jpg|Pyrrhus shows his elephant to Fabritius, Royal Palace of Amsterdam File:Bol Man in golden helmet.jpg|Man in golden helmet (Mars), National Museum, Warsaw File:Portret van een man Rijksmuseum SK-A-43.jpeg|Portrait of a Man, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam File:Ferdinand Bol - A Lady with a Fan.jpg|A Lady with a Fan, National Gallery, London File:Ferdinand Bol - An Astronomer.jpg|An Astronomer, National Gallery, London File:Governors of the Wine Merchant's Guild.jpg|Governors of the Wine Merchant's Guild, Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Notes

References

1. link. (2011-06-07)
2. Twenty years later visiting Ferdinand, Balthasar was painted by Rembrandt.
3. Immediate neighbors included [[Hendrick van Uylenburg]], who rented from [[Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy]], and [[Govert Flinck]]. [[Pieter Lastman]] and [[David Vinckboons]] lived across the bridge.
4. Biography, Getty Museum
5. Blankert, A. (1976) Ferdinand Bol.
6. Schwartz, G. (1984) Rembrandt, zijn leven, zijn schilderijen, (= his life, his paintings) p. 206.
7. Crenshaw, P. (2006) Rembrandt's Bankruptcy. The artist, his patrons and the art market in seventeenth-century Netherlands, p. 40.