Trick and treat

Hoogstraten was a master of illusion, and his ‘little deceivers’ took Europe by storm. Susan Moore charts the life of the magician in oils

Samuel van Hoogstraten, one of Rembrandt’s many pupils, described himself as nothing less than a ‘universeel of algemeen meester’ – a universal master. His self-regard was not unwarranted – this 17^th-century Dutch painter was also a poet, novelist, art theorist and courtier. His most enduring fame, however, rests as a master of illusionism. Magicians trade in sleight of hand; Hoogstraten in sleight of eye.

“Magicians trade in sleight of hand; Hoogstraten in sleight of eye”

His optical experiments ranged from virtuoso trompe-l’oeil still-lives and architectural perspectives to ingenious perspective boxes and even the performance of shadow figures, projected moving images, perhaps inspired by the traditional puppet theatre of the Dutch colony of Java, as much as the moving figures of the camera obscura.

His monumental perspective, the 265cm-high View Through a House, now at Dyrham Park in Somerset, England, was one of six surviving architectural perspectives painted in London where the artist arrived in 1662. The last, executed before he returned to Holland in 1667, was the intriguing Perspective of an Open Gallery (‘The Tuscan Gallery’). Unlike the other five, this painting – to be offered at Bonhams’ Old Master Painting sale in July – is not an imaginary courtyard scene, part Dutch, part Italianate, but an evocation of a loggia in Italy itself and a bravura exercise in optical manipulation. Its Tuscan setting may have been suggested by his patron – the canvas long belonged to the Scottish Dukes of Fife at Innes House, Elgin – but it also seems to allude to one of the artist’s poems, describing Florence as “a stately home for the Gods”.

Classical antiquities adorn both loggia and garden, sculpture artfully placed to guide the viewer out to the distant avenue of cypress trees and, to the right, into the garden where a meandering path draws the eye to the distant hills. Even the figures on the ornate metalwork screen tease the eye out into the celestial beyond. Everything on this two-dimensional canvas – and not least the tiled floor – enhances the illusions of space and depth. When viewed from oblique angles, these perspectives expand further. In the case of the window centre right, a new vista emerges. There is a suggestion of human presence but no sign of it. Someone had been sitting on the chair close to the picture plane, as its indented upholstery reveals. There is a stillness, a sense of time suspended. Whatever his precise intention, Hoogstraten’s intellect and ambition is evident.

“Hoogstraten was awarded a gold chain and medallion of honour for what the artist termed his ‘little deceivers’”

The artist began conventionally enough. First apprenticed to his artist father in Dordrecht, he probably entered Rembrandt’s studio in Amsterdam around 1642. His earliest surviving works were self-portraits, Biblical scenes and court portraits. After being publicly reprimanded by the austere Mennonite religious community for wearing a sword in swagger aristocratic fashion, Hoogstraten promptly left for travels in Germany, Italy and Vienna. It was here at the Habsburg court that he developed his enduring interest in trompe l’oeil. Granted an audience with Emperor Ferdinand III in 1651, he showed a portrait, a history painting and a trompe l'oeil still life – the emperor kept the latter and was presented with a further two. In return, Hoogstraten was awarded a gold chain and medallion of honour for what the artist termed his “little deceivers”.

“Hoogstraten aimed for perfect illusionism, only to puncture it”

This symbol of princely esteem appears again and again, in portraits and still lifes, not least in the so-called faux letter racks or message-boards that he may well have invented as a genre. These are a kind of self-portrait, a personal iconography representing manuscripts or printed copies of his own writing, addressed letters, and personal effects such as comb, razor, glove or pen. Such items were also hung on the back of fictive cupboard doors. His view of the Imperial Palace precincts offered another kind of feigned painting, a scene set within a fictive ebony frame bearing a fluttering piece of paper inscribed with his signature. He aimed for perfect illusionism, only to puncture it.

Hoogstraten began to play with the possibilities of perspectival illusionism in interior spaces. The doorkijken or through-view was an established device in Dutch paintings of domestic and church interiors, offering a receding succession of spaces which included emblematic accessories that served to explain or suggest a narrative. One of the artist’s enigmatic works, Interior Viewed through a Doorway (‘The Slippers’), a covert view into an inner sanctum, is striking for its lack of figures and novel viewpoint that places us peering in from the threshold and wondering about what we cannot see. The ever-inventive artist then goes further still, mobilising what Celeste Brusati has described as “the peerings and probings of curious eyes” by means of a peepshow box that appears to extend the eye’s reach to every nook and cranny.

The artist described his most celebrated example of such a painted wooden cabinet, now in the National Gallery in London, as a “curious perspective box”. Widely considered his masterpiece, it is also the most complex of the six surviving Dutch examples of the period. Uniquely, it has a peephole at both sides as well as an open front to let in light. Once covered with translucent oiled paper, this open view of the interior presents weirdly misshapen chairs, an oddly proportioned dog and tiled floors lurching at varying angles – like the skull in Holbein’s The Ambassadors, it was painted to be legible only from a particular vantage point. Seen through a peephole, however, a sequence of interior and outdoor spaces falls into place – a different view offered from each side. Our furtive gaze at a woman asleep in her bed is mirrored by a man secretly watching a woman reading by a window. As we look in at the sleeping woman from the other side, the dog watches us.

The artist celebrated this device in his 1678 treatise, Introduction to the Academy of Painting: or the Visible World. He described it as demonstrating how the eye is deceived through the artifices of vision and painting, and where a figure the size of a finger could appear life-size. He was to embrace more than the illusion of scale in the works he produced in London, where he had apparently travelled in hope of securing lucrative commissions from the newly restored Stuart court. He did paint portraits of the aristocracy but also, significantly, the scientists of the Royal Society, including Thomas Povey, for whom he produced View Through a House. Samuel Pepys especially admired this “piece of perspective”, as he called it, after visiting Povey’s London house in 1663. As the diarist informed us, guests were amazed, on closer inspection, to find not a long enfilade but “only a plain picture hung upon the wall”. Van Hoogstraten also painted for his patron the multi-view Perspective view of the Courtyard of a House, also at Dyrham, this time featuring a palatial columned courtyard with vistas hinting at a garden.

“It is tempting to see the work as another kind of self-portrait. The person who has got up from the chair is the artist himself”

It seems that this latter kind of innovative architectural perspective had a particular appeal to a British Grand Tour clientele. Hoogstraten produced further imaginary courtyard scenes, which also seem intended to be viewed from different vantage points. Featuring a solitary figure, a prerequisite dog and cat – even the odd parrot and monkey – these views with their various vanishing points and allusive details culminated in the ambitious indoor/outdoor vistas of Perspective of an Open Gallery (The Tuscan Gallery).

It is tempting to see it, like the earlier still lifes and message boards, as another kind of self-portrait. The person who has got up from the chair is the artist himself. The globes allude to scientific experimentation, the Tuscan setting to the artist’s travels and poetry. Resting on the table in the foreground are a compass and paper – the very tools of perspective. Perhaps the subject of the painting is the art and artifice of perspective itself.

Susan Moore writes for the Financial Times and Apollo, among other publications.

Rembrandt – Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion will be at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna from 8 October to 12 January, 2025.

Samuel van Hoogstraten: The Art of Illusion will be at the Rembrandthuis Museum in Amsterdam from 1 February to 4 May, 2025

Old Master Paintings | 3 July, London, New Bond Street

For enquiries, contact Lisa Greaves on lisa.greaves@bonhams.com or +44 0 20 7468 8325.