Frederik de Moucheron (Emden 1633 - Amsterdam 1686)

He was in born in Emden, Germany, to the painter Balthasar de Moucheron (1587-1667/70) and his wife Cornelia van Broeckhoven (1590-?), as the first of six children. His parents had married in Amsterdam in 1619. It is not known when they moved to Emden. Frederik’s year of birth, 1633, is reported by Houbraken, probably based on information given by his son Isaac de Moucheron (1667-1744). Unfortunately, the baptism records in Emden for the period of 1633-41 are lost. The De Moucherons were a noble family originally from Normandy. As a Huguenot, Frederik’s great-grandfather Pierre de Moucheron (1508-1567) left France in the 1530’s and immigrated to the Southern Netherlands, where he founded a prosperous existence as a merchant.

Frederik received his first training as a painter from his father before, in or after 1647, he became a pupil of Jan Asselijn (1610-1652), who had returned from Italy in that year. By then, the De Moucherons must have moved back to Amsterdam. In 1655, Frederik left Amsterdam and travelled to Antwerp, continuing to Paris and Lyon in 1656. According to Houbraken, his stay in France lasted several years. It was a fruitful phase, considering the amount of drawings with French subjects. Frederik might well have continued to Italy and even travelled further around the Mediterranean as is suggested by some drawings with Italian, Moroccan and Greek motifs;³³One drawing, sale London (Christie’s), 4 July 1978, no. 101, is inscribed ‘by Turin’. His views of Italian, Moroccan and Greek sites are in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Atlas van der Hem; cf. E. de Groot et al. (eds.), The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem of the Austrian National Library, 7 vols., ’t Goy-Houten 1996-2008, II (1999), nos. 11:40-47; IV (2004), nos. 34:09, 34:10, 34:20, 34:56; V (2005), no. 37:12, apparently going back to first-hand knowledge as assumed by S. Alsteens and H. Buijs, Paysages de France dessinés par Lambert Doomer et les artistes hollandais et flamands des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris 2008, p. 296. even more so as he occasionally signed with an Italian version of his name, ‘Frederico’ or ‘Frederiko’.

Via Antwerp, he returned to Amsterdam. There, on 3 July 1659, he married Maria Magdalena (Marieke) de Jouderville (1636-1719) from Leiden, a daughter of the painter Isaac de Jouderville (1613-1645/47). They were members of the Reformed Church and lived on the Laurierdwarsstraat in Amsterdam. Of the twelve children born to the couple between 1660 and 1678, eight were still alive at Frederik’s death. His son Isaac de Moucheron became a successful painter, being the only known pupil of Frederik.

After his travels, Frederik de Moucheron lived and worked in Amsterdam, apart from a short stay in Rotterdam in 1671, where he acted as agent and witness in the sale of twelve paintings. He was a productive painter and draughtsman. Only few of his paintings are dated, the earliest being from the 1660s, such as Landscape with Waterfall of 1665, formerly on the art market.⁴⁴Sale, Amsterdam (Christie’s), 9 May 2000, no. 6. His motifs were mainly Italianate landscapes in the manner of Jan Asselijn and Jan Both (1615/22-1652), as well as garden views, some closely related with works by Jan Blom (1621/22-1685). There are also hunting scenes and landscapes of a more Northern character, the latter mostly from the later phase of his career, such as one dated 1674 in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (inv. no. 1827).⁵⁵J. Lauts, Katalog alte Meister bis 1800: Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, 2 vols., coll. cat. Karlsruhe 1966, I, p. 215; II, p. 195. Of his large wall paintings, none is preserved, whereas on a small scale, his wall decorations in the ‘saletkamer’ in the Dollhouse of Petronella de la Court (1624-1707) of c. 1686 at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (inv. no. 5000), survived.⁶⁶A. Blankert, Nederlandse 17e eeuwse italianiserende landschapschilders, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1965, no. 142, fig. 145. His latest dated painting is a Wooded Landscape of 1681 in the Musée Magnin, Dijon (inv. no. 1938E285). He often let other painters, such as Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683), Adriaen van der Velde (1636-1672) and Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674), add staffage to his paintings; in France, such work was done by Dirck Helmbreker (1633-1696). With Berchem, he finished the paintings left by Willem Schellinks (1623-1678) after the latter’s death.

Frederik de Moucheron died in 1686. He was then living on the Kerkstraat near the Amstel. Previous addresses include the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal (in 1664) and the Nieuwe Vijzelstraat (by 1675). He was buried on 5 January 1686 in the Heiligewegs and Leidsche Kerkhof.⁷⁷Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, DTB 1228, fol. 223: ‘Frederikus de Moucheron konstschilder inde Amstel, kerckstraat bij de uijtersse laat na 8 kinderen’.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

References
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