b. 1623 Schoonhoven, The Netherlands, d. after 1654 possibly Hamburg, Germany
painter
Dutch

Originally from Flanders, Herman Nauwincx worked as an etcher, painter, and carpet dealer. He specialized in landscapes; his earliest work is probably a group of Dutch landscape scenes with farmhouses. He often borrowed motifs from other artists and made variations on them. In his Baptism of the Eunuch, for example, he took the figure group from Rembrandt van Rijn's etching of the same subject.

When Nauwincx's landscapes required figures, he sometimes called on two other painters, Willem Schellinks or Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, to populate the scenes. Nauwincx's surviving etchings represent hilly wooded landscapes, some with a panoramic viewpoint. The scenes and technique show the artist's familiarity with both the Italianate tradition of landscape painting in Holland and works in Jacob van Ruisdael's more purely Dutch style. Nauwincx's drawings were both finished works of art and preparatory drawings for etchings or paintings. There is no trace of him after 1651. Though he is said to have lived in Hamburg, he could have been simply making business trips there as a merchant.