Jan van Almeloveen
Encyclopedia
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, engraver, and draughtsman
Technical drawing
Technical drawing, also known as drafting or draughting, is the act and discipline of composing plans that visually communicate how something functions or has to be constructed.Drafting is the language of industry....
of the 17th century, principally known for some neatly-executed etchings of landscapes.
He was born in Mijdrecht
Mijdrecht
Mijdrecht is a town in the municipality of De Ronde Venen, in the Netherlands.It is located west of the main A2 motorway, between Utrecht and Amsterdam.Its population is around 17,000. The football team Argon has its stadium here....
, according to an inscription on his 1678 mezzotint
Mezzotint
Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...
portrait
Portrait painting
Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait...
of his father, Johannes ab Almeloveen, a preacher in that city. He made 38 prints in total, all of which are etchings, mostly landscapes, including Dutch villages and rivers. Twenty of his landscape prints are based on the work of Dutch painter Herman Saftleven
Herman Saftleven
Herman Saftleven the Younger , was a Dutch painter of the Baroque period.-Biography:Born in Rotterdam, Saftleven lived most of his life in Utrecht. His brothers, Cornelis Saftleven and Abraham Saftleven were both painters...
, with twelve depicting Dutch villages, and a series of four diamond-shaped prints of the Four Seasons. The other prints were created from his own designs and are less lively in composition. He died sometime after 1683, the year written on his last known print.
His Landscape with Harvesters illustrates the mid-17th-century shift in Dutch landscape art from a fascination with agricultural work that was prevalent in the 16th century, to a recreational interest in the scenery and the pleasures of country life.