Versatile Virtuoso - Wallerant Vaillant in Amsterdam

Wallerant Vaillant

The Lille-born artist came to Amsterdam in 1643 after his training in Antwerp. Like many in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, Vaillant was an immigrant. He quickly made a name as a portraitist but also explored the latest graphic techniques and became one of the forerunners of mezzotint, a groundbreaking technique also known as “black art.” His pioneering use of this technique still makes him a significant name in graphic art today. It ensured that even a hundred years after his death, he was described in the magazine De Gids as a stranger “on whose stay here every Amsterdammer may truly be proud […]”.