How relative fame sometimes can be, is shown by the story of Adriaen van der Werff (1659 –1722), a Rotterdam-based artist who gained great success with his fine paintings, for the most part biblical and (erotic) mythological scenes. Stylistically, he was a typical transitional figure between the ‘Golden’ seventeenth and eighteenth century, applying the techniques from Dutch baroque in a more classical, elegant manner.
Van der Werff was praised for his fabulous technique and his ‘noble’, elevated style, not only by his compatriots, who generally regarded him the as the best contemporary painter in the country, but throughout Europe. His work was collected by rulers such as Louis XVI of France and Frederick the Great, who even bought twenty of his paintings. Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine of Düsseldorf, appreciated Van der Werff’s skills so much that he appointed him court painter and later even knighted him. For one of his more important commissions, Friedrich Wilhelm awarded Van der Werff with a gold chain and medal.
It is that jewel that we recognize in this handsome self-portrait from the year 1699, painted at the very end of the seventeenth century. Van der Werff shows himself as a family man, holding a picture of his wife and daughter, but also as a worthy and confident artist. Back then, he could impossibly know that his reputation would fade so enormously. After gradually losing his popularity in the decades after his death, Van der Werff fell out of grace altogether: museums and art historians in the nineteenth century blamed him for ‘betraying’ the Dutch realistic tradition, then (and today not so much less) considered the only ‘true Art’.
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