De Witte was a specialist in the painting of church interiors, both real and imaginary. These form the major part of his work, and demonstrate his knowledge of linear perspective. After 1650 he painted some domestic interiors and fanciful pictures of harbours, as well as market scenes.
De Witte was born at Alkmaar, and in 1636 became a member of the guild of painters there. After a brief period in Rotterdam, he moved to Delft in the 1640s. His earliest works are figure paintings in the style of artists from Utrecht; he was later influenced by Gerrit Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Carel Fabritius and other Delft painters. From 1652 he was chiefly active at Amsterdam. His last dated work is of 1688.
Emanuel de Witte
1615/17 - 1691/2
Paintings by Emanuel de Witte
Emanuel de Witte is best known for his pictures of church interiors, but he had begun his career as a figure painter and later in life started painting portraits. This is one of them. We know from contemporary documents that this is a portrait of one of his patrons, Adriana van Heusden, and her d...
An atmospheric light, something characteristic of Emanuel de Witte’s many church interiors, falls on the congregation gathered in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk to hear a sermon. De Witte started his career as a figure painter but became a master of this genre, in which architecture and the effects of lig...
Not on display
Bathed in an atmospheric light that is characteristic of de Witte, even the dog in the foreground seems to be listening to the preacher on the pulpit. The city of Amsterdam employed people to keep dogs out of churches, but judging from how common they are in seventeenth-century paintings of churc...