EVERDINGEN, ALLART VAN Dutch painter and engraver, studied under Peter de Molyn at Haarlem and settled about 1657 at Amsterdam, where he remained till his death. Everdingen realized the large and effective system of col oured and powerfully shaded landscape which marks the pre cursors of Rembrandt. It is still an open question when de Molyn wielded influence on his clever disciple. We find Allart at first a painter of coast scenery. But on one of his expeditions he is said to have been cast ashore in Norway, and during the repairs of his ship he visited the inland valleys and thus gave a new course to his art. In early pieces he represents the sea in motion under varied, but mostly clouded, aspects of sky. Their general intona tion is strong and brown and effects are rendered in a powerful key, but the execution is much more uniform than that of Jacob Ruysdael. A dark scud lowering on a rolling sea near the walls of Flushing characterizes Everdingen's "Mouth of the Schelde," in the Hermitage at Leningrad. Storm is the marked feature of sea-pieces in the Staedel or Robartes collections; and a strand with wreckers at the foot of a cliff, in the Munich Pinakothek, may be a reminiscence of personal adventure in Norway. But the Norwegian coast was studied in calms as well as in gales ; and a fine canvas at Munich shows fishermen on a still and sunny day taking herrings to a smoking hut at the foot of a Norwegian crag. Everdingen was a precursor of Jacob Ruysdael in a certain form of landscape composition ; but though very skilful in arrangement and clever in effects, Everdingen remains much more simple in execution ; he is much less subtle in feeling or varied in touch than his great and incomparable countryman. Five of Everdingen's cascades are in the museum of Copenhagen alone ; of these, one is dated 1647, another 1649. In the Hermitage at Leningrad is a fine example of 1647 ; another in the Pinakothek at Munich was finished in 1656. Of his etchings and drawings there are much larger and more numerous specimens in England than elsewhere. He died in Amsterdam and his collection of pictures was sold on March 11, 1676.
His two brothers, JAN and CAESAR, were both painters. CAESAR was mainly known as a portrait painter.