Velde, Jan van de, II

Jan van de Velde was born in 1593 in Rotterdam or Delft to Jan van de Velde the Elder, a calligrapher from Antwerp who had relocated to the northern Netherlands in 1592 to escape religious persecution, and Maijcken Van Bracht from Turnhout. He was raised in Rotterdam and in 1613 was apprenticed to the engraver Jacob Matham in Haarlem. The following year, 1614, he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. Within the next three years he produced over one hundred prints, an extraordinary rate of production that placed him among the most active artists in the city.

In 1616 he executed a series of 26 landscape drawings of Haarlem, which he later expanded to 60 prints. He may have traveled to Italy in 1617, and by 1618 he was documented in Enkhuizen, where he married Styntje Frederixdr. From 1635 he served as a commissioner of the guild, but his traces disappear after 1636 until he resurfaced in Enkhuizen, where he lived until his death around 1 November 1641. He was buried in Enkhuizen on 4 November 1641.

Van de Velde worked across multiple genres QS genres, but his most significant contribution lay in printmaking, particularly etching. He was among the earliest Dutch artists to experiment with the etching technique, alongside Esaias van de Velde and Willem Pietersz. Buytewech, seeking new tonal effects and atmospheric qualities in landscape prints. To achieve this, they abandoned long contour lines in favor of small strokes and dots. His graphic work encompassed portraits, landscapes, allegories, contemporary life scenes, and book illustrations for descriptive texts, poetry, fables, and song collections. The French source credits him with being among the first to experiment with aquatint, a tonal etching method, though this claim requires qualification and the technique was later developed more fully by Jean-Baptiste Le Prince in France. In his later career he also produced prints after designs by other artists, including Frans Hals, Pieter de Molyn, and Pieter Jansz Saenredam.

Van de Velde's most significant project was his series of Haarlem views, begun in 1616 with 26 landscape prints and expanded three decades later to 60 prints. The majority of these are preserved in the North Holland Archives. The series proved commercially successful, as evidenced by a 1674 advertisement in the Haarlems Dagblad offering 36 folio copper plates and three sketchbooks by Jan van de Velde for sale following the death of his publisher Passchier van Wesbusch. His print catalogue numbers approximately five hundred works. The North Holland Archives also hold a few prints from a related series of 12 local landscapes by Esaias van de Velde, suggesting possible collaboration between the two working on this project.

Van de Velde received his training from Jacob Matham in Haarlem, entering his workshop in 1613. His own work was influenced by Rembrandt van Rijn, and in turn his graphic style influenced other masters in the landscape genre. The exact nature of his relationship to Esaias van de Velde has been debated: some sources, following Houbraken, describe them as brothers, while other scholars, including John Denison Champlin, identify Esaias as his cousin. The Dutch Encyclopedia now considers it more likely that they were cousins rather than brothers. Van de Velde was also not related to the family of Willem van de Velde the Elder, despite occasional claims to the contrary. He taught his own son, Jan van de Velde III (1620-1662), who became a still life painter. The French source notes that he trained several pupils, though their names are not specified.

Van de Velde's posthumous reputation rests on his extraordinary productivity as a printmaker and his role in advancing etching techniques in the Dutch Golden Age. His works are held in numerous museums across Europe and the United States. The 1883 catalogue of his oeuvre by Johan Philip van der Kellen and Daniel Franken remains a foundational reference. His works have been discussed in major exhibition contexts, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Vermeer and The Delft School" exhibition catalogue. The 1674 sale of his publisher's stock indicates continued commercial interest in his plates decades after his death.