Isaac de Moucheron

Portrait of Isaak Moucheron (lower left) in Jan van Gool's "Nieuw Schouburg", 1750

Rugged river landscape with a nymph surprised by a satyr

Isaac de Moucheron (1667, Amsterdam – 1744, Amsterdam), was an 18th-century painter and interior decorator (wall painter) from the Northern Netherlands.

Biography

According to Houbraken when he returned from Italy he had with him a copy he had made himself after Nicolas Poussin, which the postmaster of Zwolle bought without asking him who had painted it. When Isaac later declared that it was a copy by his own hand, he claimed the postmaster had never explicitly asked who had painted it, but had wished to see his things that he had brought back with him. This anecdote was told in order to show the popularity of Poussin in the art market of the Netherlands in Gerard Uilenburg's time. Houbraken mentioned him again as a Rome traveller with the bentname Ordenantie in his biographical sketch of Pieter de Molyn, who he knew in Rome. Moucheron told Houbraken that he judged De Molijn at that time to be a man of about 50 in 1697. Houbraken intended to write a biographical sketch of Isaak in his birth year of 1667, and mentioned this in his biographical sketch of his father Frederik de Moucheron, but never got that far (he died before publication of Volume III, which ended with birth year 1659).

According to the RKD he was one of eleven children of the landscape painter Frederik de Moucheron and Maria Magdalena de Jouderville, the daughter of the Rembrandt pupil Isaac de Jouderville, for whom he was named. His father taught him to paint and then he travelled to Italy for two years in 1695. When he returned he became known for Italianate landscapes on wall hangings for wealthy Amsterdam families. He collaborated on larger projects with Jacob de Wit, and many of their collaborations still remain in the patrician homes where they were painted in Amsterdam.

References

• Isaac de Moucheron on Artnet