Godfried Schalcken
painter from the Northern Netherlands (1643–1706)

Godfried Schalcken (8 October 1643 – 16 November 1706) was a Dutch artist who specialized in genre paintings and portraits. Schalcken was noted for his night scenes and mastery in reproducing the effect of candlelight. He painted in the highly polished style of the Leiden fijnschilders.
Life and work
Godfried Schalcken was born in Made, North Brabant, the son of Cornelis Schalcken and Aletta Lydius. Before he was four years old, his family moved to Dordrecht, where his father became rector of the Latin school. Schalcken studied under Samuel van Hoogstraten in Dordrecht before he moved to Leiden, into the studio of Gerard Dou (1613–1675), one of Rembrandt's most famous pupils. His earlier genre pictures very closely resemble Dou's work. He worked in Leiden until c. 1675, then returning to Dordrecht until 1691, after which he settled in The Hague, where he continued to paint until his death in 1706. He also visited England (1692–1697), but his uncouth manners and bad temper alienated him from the society there.
“Godfried Schalcken” enters the record as painter from the Northern Netherlands (1643–1706). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Godfried, Schalcken and painter can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Godfried Schalcken” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.