Ferdinand Bol

Born Dordrecht, bapt 24 June 1616; died Amsterdam, bur 24 July 1680.

Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was a pupil and prominent follower of Rembrandt in Amsterdam. His reputation and fame are based on his history paintings, which, though successful at the time, lack originality, and on his portraits, a genre for which he showed more talent.

1. Life and career.

His father, a surgeon, belonged to the prosperous middle class. Ferdinand received his initial training as a painter in Dordrecht from Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp. It is possible that he, like Cuyp, worked for a short time in Utrecht, for his earliest signed work, Vertumnus and Pomona (c. 1635; London, Cevat priv. col., see Blankert, 1982, pl. 1), exhibits influences of the Utrecht school. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bol did not travel to Italy, but left for Amsterdam in 1637, at the age of nearly 20, to study in Rembrandt’s workshop. The older painter’s influence profoundly affected the whole of his subsequent career. It is not known how long he remained with Rembrandt; however, there is no surviving signed and dated work before 1642. This would suggest that he had set up around this time as an independent painter.

Bol received his first major commission in 1649, a group portrait of the Four Regents of the Amsterdam Lepers’ House (Amsterdam, Hist. Mus.). His reputation increased quickly, and he subsequently received commissions from outside Amsterdam, for instance for the group portrait of the Officers of the Doelen in Gouda (1653; Gouda, Stedel. Mus. Catharina Gasthuis). Although Bol had already lived for some time in Amsterdam, he became a citizen of the city suddenly in 1652, probably in connection with the decoration of Amsterdam’s new town hall, for which the only candidates eligible were natives of the city. The following year he married Lysbeth Dell (d 1660), whose father, Elbert Dell, occupied a number of public offices, including ones at the Admiralty and the Wine Merchants’ Guild. Bol received commissions from these institutions, probably through the intervention of his father-in-law. Bol lived with Lysbeth Dell on the Fluwelenburgwal, in the prosperous part of the city. Their only child to survive to adulthood, Elbert Bol, was born the following year.

Among Bol’s later commissions is a series of portraits of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, painted between 1661 and 1663 on the occasion of the journey to Chatham. In 1669 Bol married Anna van Arckel (d 1680), the wealthy widow of the treasurer of the Admiralty. One of the witnesses at the wedding, which was held in the Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam, was Bol’s brother-in-law from his first marriage, Elbert Dell the younger. After this marriage Bol moved to the Herengracht and apparently stopped painting; there is no surviving work after 1669.

2. Work.

(i) History subjects.

Bol was clearly very dependent on Rembrandt in his early paintings and drawings; he copied compositions by his master almost literally, such as the biblical scene that probably depicts Rachel Being Shown to Jacob (c. 1640; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.), for which Rembrandt’s Danaë (1636; St Petersburg, Hermitage; see ) served as the model. The Three Marys by the Tomb (1644; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) is one of Bol’s earliest dated paintings. Bol’s talent was not at its best in this or his other narrative scenes. In general, they are rather statically conceived. Nevertheless, he received many such commissions for history paintings throughout his career, and he adapted his style over the years to conform to prevailing fashions.

After 1650 Bol turned away from Rembrandt’s influence and adopted a new style of history painting, one that was more classicizing and elaborate and had recently been employed with great success in the decoration of the Huis ten Bosch near The Hague. The new town hall (now the Koninklijk Palais) in Amsterdam, the construction of which began in 1648, led to more commissions for this style of decorative painting, which suited the majestic character of the classicizing architecture. Bol was commissioned along with Govaert Flinck, another leading Amsterdam history painter, to decorate the burgomaster’s office, one of the most important rooms in the new Stadhuis. Each was asked to design an overmantel that would express the burgomaster’s status, prestige and incorruptibility. Opposite Flinck’s Marcus Curtius Dentatus Refusing the Gifts of the Samnites (1656; in situ) hangs Bol’s Pyrrhus and Fabricius (1656; in situ).

The combination of Pyrrhus and Dentatus in a single room is unique in Netherlandish painting. Plutarch (Fabricius Luscinus, 21.20) recorded how the Roman consul Fabricius remained unmoved by the bribery of King Pyrrhus, who even tried to buy him off with the offer of an elephant. In an age when ancient culture was being revived, the burgomasters of Amsterdam were fond of comparing themselves to Roman consuls, whom they saw as prototypes of citizen–administrators of a republic. Bol’s first compositional sketches are still fairly Rembrandtesque, and the standing figure at the extreme right of the final composition is derived from a figure in Rembrandt’s ‘Hundred Guilder Print’ (c. 1643–9; b. 74; see [not available online]). The large figures and clear colours in this complex composition combine with surface divisions to achieve a spacious effect that was entirely to the taste of the commissioning body. An explicatory poem by Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679) is written on the wall under the two paintings. For another room in the Stadhuis, the aldermen’s chamber, where trials were conducted, Bol painted another overmantel, Moses with the Tablets of the Law (c. 1664; in situ).

Bol was commissioned by the Admiralty to portray its guiding principles of reward and punishment in the same manner as he had done in his paintings for the new Stadhuis. For their council chamber he designed two overmantels: Aeneas Distributing Prizes (The Hague, Dienst Verspr. Rijkscol., on loan to Utrecht, Rijksuniv.) and Consul Titus Manlius Torquatus Beheading his Son (Imperia Manliana) (The Hague, Dienst Verspr. Rijkscol., on loan to Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). In 1661, instead of another group portrait, the regents of the Lepers’ House commissioned a painting of a biblical theme to illustrate the regents’ care for the sick. Instead of using the traditional comparison of Dives and Lazarus, Bol chose the Old Testament story from 2 Kings 5) of the Prophet Elisha Refusing the Gifts of Naaman the Syrian (Amsterdam, Hist. Mus): the regents could identify with the incorruptible prophet Elisha, and his greedy servant Gehazi provided an example for the institution’s attendants of behaviour to avoid.

Bol’s Offering of Gifts at the Building of Solomon’s Temple (1669; Amsterdam, Ned. Hervormde Gemeente), dating from the year of his second marriage, may have been painted to encourage churchgoers to emulate his own generosity: Bol made this large canvas, apparently his last work, a gift to the congregation. The work is not distinguished for its originality and is a variation on an earlier sketch that probably represents the Incorruptibility of Fabricius (1656; Amsterdam, Hist. Mus.).

(ii) Portraits.

Bol’s earliest signed and dated portraits, from 1642–4, include a series of portraits of women, dressed according to the prevailing fashion, with large lace ruffs (e.g. 1642; Berlin, Gemäldegal.). These early portraits are a continuation of the style of Rembrandt but without his ability to convey the individuality of the sitter. For this reason, the attribution to Bol of the vivid portrait of Elisabeth Bas (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) cannot be correct.

Like Rembrandt, Bol painted many tronies (character heads) and also imitated Rembrandt’s custom of portraying men in a hat or beret. Not until 1649, with his first major commission for a group portrait, did Bol’s work become somewhat more independent: the Four Regents of the Amsterdam Lepers’ House is less in the manner of Rembrandt than in the tradition of earlier painters such as Thomas de Keyser. Although it initially seems to be a completely natural group of people, it is actually a composed tableau. The Regents’ duty to care for lepers is underlined by the presence of a little boy with leprosy and an inmate of the institution at the extreme left.

Bol’s individual portraits follow prevailing trends, influenced especially by the elegant portraits of van Dyck and other Flemish artists. By the 1650s Bol’s palette included considerably more red, and several portraits from this period, such as the Portrait of a Young Man (1652; The Hague, Mauritshuis), were painted against a landscape background. The sitter is painted in the Flemish manner; the background landscape is pure Rembrandt. More of Bol’s portraits, however, are set in an interior rather than against a landscape background. Most of these show the sitter in three-quarter length, on a chair, with a table just visible and a curtain at the back. Examples include the Self-portrait and its pendant portrait of Elisabeth Dell (both 1653; Dell Park, Surrey, B. Schroeder priv. col., see Blankert, 1982, pl. 163). The best known of Bol’s numerous self-portraits is his last (c. 1669; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), with a frame embossed with sunflowers. It was probably painted on the occasion of his second marriage. The sleeping Cupid and the column are symbols of chastity, and the sunflower is meant to symbolize his honourable love for his second bride. The only one of Bol’s many portraits that can be said to have an originality entirely its own is the Portrait of a Boy (1652; Castle Howard, N. Yorks). It is without a trace of Rembrandt’s influence, and in it Bol showed a surprising talent, which was never further developed, for still-life in the fruit and glass vessels at the lower right. Bol’s later portraits became repetitious, in the same way as his history paintings. He made more portraits of men in berets and returned to Rembrandt’s manner. In fact, Bol had little style of his own; he adapted to every new or changing fashion and to the taste of his patrons.

Marijke van der Meij-Tolsma. "Bol, Ferdinand." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T009672 (accessed May 3, 2012).