Imitation and collaboration in seventeenth-century flemish genre painting : deconstructing "originality"

Abstract

To Postmodern thinking, the Modernist concept of originality in an artist's work is employed freely and often far too loosely as a criterion of aesthetic excellence. A presumed lack of originality in the work of seventeenth-century Flemish genre painters has led twentieth-centuiy critics to discount its importance. One such artist was David HI Ryckaert (1612-1661) who has been dismissed time and again as an artist "de second rang", handicapped by a deficiency of the creative faculties (de Mirimonde 1968:177).2 Drawing on the example of David IE Ryckaert, I mean to argue that the conventions and circumstances surrounding the production of artworks by genre painters like him make it difficult or impossible to employ the term originality in assessing the work.