Gerard de Lairesse

Gerard or Gérard (de) Lairesse (11 September 1641 – June 1711) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist. His broad range of talent included music, poetry, and theatre. De Lairesse was influenced by the Perugian Cesare Ripa and French classicist painters as Charles le Brun, Simon Vouet and authors as Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. His importance grew in the period following the death of Rembrandt. His treatises on painting and drawing, Grondlegginge der teekenkonst (1701), based on geometry and Groot Schilderboek (1707), were highly influential on 18th-century painters.

De Lairesse was born in Liège and was the second son of painter Renier de Lairesse (1597-1667). He studied art under his father and from 1655 under Bertholet Flemalle. He worked in Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle for Maximilian Henry of Bavaria in 1660. In 1664 De Lairesse fled from Liège after an affair with two sisters, his models, went wrong. He traveled north with a girl named Marie Salme and married her in Visé. The couple settled in Utrecht, where a son was baptized in April 1665. When his talent was discovered by the art dealer Gerrit van Uylenburgh, he moved quickly to Amsterdam. De Lairesse arrived with his violin, with which he impressed Jan van Pee and probably Anthonie Claesz. de Grebber in Uylenburgh's studio. In 1667 De Lairesse became a poorter, living on Nieuwmarkt. In 1670 a son Abraham was born; the engraver Abraham Blooteling, with whom he collaborated, was the witness; another son was baptized in 1673.

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