- Also known as
-
Abraham Blooteling
-
primary name: Blooteling, Abraham
-
other name: Blootelingh, Abraham
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other name: Blotelingh, Abraham
- Details
- individual; printmaker; publisher/printer; Dutch; Male
- Life dates
- 1640-1690
- Biography
- Engraver and mezzotinter. A key figure in the transfer of Dutch mezzotint to England, but he has been very little studied. The documents about him were assembled by A.D. de Vries (Oud Holland, III 1885, pp.64-7 and 137-9). He was the pupil of the engraver Cornelis van Dalen, who had himself come to England in the 1630s (see Hind III pp.253-8 for fourteen prints with English connections). In 1660 he appears in Paris, where he was apprenticed by a 'Jean Saumert' to the well-known engraver Pierre van Schuppen (1629-1702), himself of Netherlandish birth (M.Grivel, 'Le commerce de l'estampe à Paris au XVII siècle', Geneva 1986, p.17). This explains the French character of his engravings; and if 'Jean Saumert' was Jan van Somer, it links him with another early mezzotinter. In Paris Blooteling met Wallerant Vaillant (q.v.) who probably revealed Rupert's mezzotint process to him. In 1665 Cornelis van Dalen I, whose children had predeceased him, made Blooteling his heir; this brought Blooteling back to Amsterdam, and his first dated print belongs to this year. In Amsterdam Blooteling collaborated with Vaillant.
According to Vertue (II 26), Blooteling and his son-in-law Gerard Valck were brought to England by David Loggan. But in fact he came with his family on 14 January 1673 on the order of Prince Rupert (see PQ 2000 p.120); possibly encouraged by decreasing production of portrait paintings (after which Blooteling engraved his admiralty portraits) following the death of Bartholomeus van der Helst in 1670 and Ferdinand Bol's marriage to a rich woman after which the latter painted very little. There are no documents for his time in London. In September 1678 he was in Amsterdam attending the christening of Valck's son, and in the immediately succeeding years seems to have divided his energies between London and Amsterdam. He certainly continued to work for the English market (he not only published under his own name, but made plates for Lloyd in the early 1680s), and quite possibly continued to make London his main base. In his later career he acted more as a publisher than as an engraver.
- Bibliography
- Hollstein (281 nos, 1-143 engravings, 144-281 mezzotints)
E. Wessely, Abraham Blooteling. Verzeichnis seiner Kupferstiche und Schabkunstblätter, in Archiv für die Zeichnenden Künste 13 (1867), pp.1-92.
Mary Bryan H. Curd, 'Making a fine impression: Abraham Blooteling and his fellow engravers, 1673-1684', in 'Flemish and Dutch Artists in Early Modern England', Farnham, 2010, pp.127-161 (with appendices listing dated prints by Blooteling).
