A Horseshoe Crab1640/80
Pieter Holsteyn, the younger painted this in 1640/80, aged about 26. It is now at the Art Institute of Chicago. More about this work
About this work
A work made of watercolor and opaque watercolor on cream laid paper.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
Pieter Holsteyn, the younger painted this in 1640/80, aged about 26. It is now at the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Opaque watercolour
- Watercolour made opaque with white or chalk and laid in flat, even layers. Persian and Indian painters ground their colours from minerals, applied them with the finest brushes and burnished the finished page.
- Watercolour
- Pigment in gum arabic, thinned with water and laid in transparent washes. Nothing white is painted: the light is the paper showing through.
- Laid paper
- Handmade on a mould of close-set wires, which leave fine parallel lines you can see when the sheet is held to the light.
Dutch Golden Age
Seventeenth-century painting from the Dutch Republic: still lifes, interiors, portraits and flat, wide skies.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 2020.264
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
