Jean Augustin Daiwaille

Jean Augustin Daiwaille (active 1796-1820) was a key figure in early 19th-century Dutch visual culture, notable for his technical mastery of both traditional oil painting and the rapidly developing medium of lithography. A professional portrait painter, Daiwaille’s extant output reveals an artist deeply invested in the precise depiction of character, primarily catering to the rising bourgeois class of the period.

His professional focus centered squarely on commissioned likenesses, yet his surviving works hint at a broader, if less documented, interest in animal studies and classical allegory. While recognized as a painter, his lasting significance rests largely on his experimentation with lithography. Daiwaille was among the first wave of European artists to embrace this demanding new printing technology, utilizing it to expand the accessibility of his work through high-quality prints. His oeuvre, significantly preserved in the Rijksmuseum collection, consists of only two known paintings, a single drawing, but a dozen crucial prints, securing his standing as an influential lithographer of the era.

Daiwaille excelled at capturing the formal severity and careful refinement required by his sitters. Exemplary of his portrait practice are the focused character study, Portret van Abraham Uytenbogaart met hoge hoed, and the dual composition, Portretten van Abraham Uytenbogaart en Hendrik Stokvisch, which showcase his meticulous attention to costume and facial expression. Given the highly formal nature of these commissions, the inclusion of allegorical works like Venus en Amor zwevend in de lucht bij hert suggests an artist who occasionally welcomed a more Romantic sensibility, perhaps a pleasant diversion from the stiff collars of his primary clientele.

Active for approximately two and a half decades, Daiwaille represents the transitional artist who embraced mechanical reproduction as a means of extending artistic reach beyond the canvas. Today, many of Jean Augustin Daiwaille prints are available as downloadable artwork, accessible through the public domain status afforded to masters of his generation. This ensures that his meticulous approach to line and shade, vital for successful printmaking, remains widely accessible, cementing his technical rather than purely pictorial legacy.