Early Modern Artistry and Experiment in the Work of Thomas Wijck

[Paul Ferguson]

"The interiors inhabited by the alchemists in the work of the Dutch artist Thomas Wijck (1616–1677) are fascinating and complex. Scattered with the tools and props of the alchemist’s trade, Wijck’s laboratories are messy spaces that privilege making and experimentation alongside creative enterprise and innovation. The alchemists who command these workrooms are not foolhardy or morally corrupt, but serious-minded, respectable individuals whose work was embedded in local and global exchanges of knowledge. Wijck’s paintings remind us of the parallels between the alchemist’s pursuit and the painter’s craft – how the grinding of pigments and mixing of solvents gave way to rich imagery of the visible world. The intersection of art and alchemy is reflected in the career of Wijck himself, an understudied artist who carefully built an artistic and professional identity around the depiction of alchemists in the early modern Netherlands."

Reviewed here:

https://hnanews.org/hnar/reviews/painted...mas-wijck/

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wijck

https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/84301


   

[Paul Ferguson]

Elisabeth Berry Drago

Painted Alchemists

Early Modern Artistry and Experiment in the Work of Thomas Wijck


"Thomas Wijck’s painted alchemical laboratories were celebrated in his day as "artful" and "ingenious." They fell into obscurity along with their subject, as alchemy came to be viewed as an occult art or a fool’s errand. But these unusual pictures challenge our understanding of early modern alchemy-and of the deeper relationship between chemical workshops and the artists who represented them. The work of artists, like the work of alchemists, contained intellectual-creative and manual-material aspects. Both alchemists and artists claimed a special status owing to their creative powers. Wijck’s formation of an artistic and professional identity around alchemical themes reveals his desire to explore this curious territory, and ultimately to demonstrate art’s superior claims to knowledge and mastery over nature. This book explores one artist’s transformation of alchemy and its materials into a reputation for virtuosity-and what his work can teach us about the experimental early modern world."



https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048537778...alchemists

---

Another Wijck.

Lots of similar paintings at Adam's site:

https://alchemywebsite.com/Alchemy_labor...16-17.html