Berchem’s powers of imagination and audacious creativity are seen at their most extreme in his late port and harbour scenes, in which he reaps the benefit of Jan Baptist Weenix’ radical new approach to a theme that had been current since Jan Brueghel. In these compositions – so-called capriccios – fantastic Eastern figures, gaily clad players, ladies and their cavaliers in the very latest fashions enjoy unlikely encounters against the backdrop of Mediterranean Italy. The dreamland of Arcadia is transformed into a modern, up-to-date composite – more about life style than poetry. Berchem thus laid the foundations for the fanciful society games of the French Rococo, the dreamy fêtes galantes of Antoine Watteau, and the more sensual tête-à-têtes of François Boucher.
These immaculately finished paintings, with their beautiful colours, noble motifs and Classicist architecture, mark the onset of the last stage of the great flowering of Dutch painting, as it moved from realistic depiction to idealised invention. In Berchem’s hands painting thrives in every fresh brushstroke, in the powerfully accentuated light, and above all in the uninterrupted intensity of the atmosphere. These characteristics, which he shared with other artists of his generation, ultimately meant that their paintings came to be regarded as one of the high points in art history.