Carel Fabritius Biography

Carel Fabritius was a prolific Dutch painter, best known for his paintings ‘The Goldfinch’ and ‘The Sentry.’ Born and raised in Middenbeemster, the Dutch Republic, he was one of the four children of his parents. He inherited the love for fine arts from his father. His father himself was a painter and a schoolteacher, and both of his younger brothers went on to become painters, too. He began his career as a carpenter and eventually developed an interest in the arts. He learned painting at Rembrandt’s studio in Amsterdam. Rembrandt was a highly prolific painter, who is still considered the most influential visual artist in Dutch history. Carel later moved to Delft and joined the Delft painters’ guild there. Of all of Rembrandt’s students, Carel was the only one who had developed his own painting style, which later became his signature style. He created highly luminous paintings and experimented a lot with the lighting. He painted his first known creation, ‘The Beheading of John the Baptist,’ in 1640, and later created paintings such as ‘The Goldfinch’ and ‘Young Man in a Fur Cap.’ ‘The Goldfinch’ was discovered more than 2 centuries after Carel’s death and inspired a novel and a film of the same name.