Schalcken painted by looking through a small hole into a dark room where a candle lit his subject. Horace Walpole recorded the method: the painter observed the candlelit scene through the aperture and painted what he saw using natural daylight at his easel. The technique produced nocturnal images of extraordinary intimacy, and his mastery of artificial light made him the most celebrated specialist in the genre after Gerrit Dou.

He was born in Made, North Brabant, in 1643, the son of a Latin school rector. He studied under Samuel van Hoogstraten in Dordrecht, then under Gerrit Dou in Leiden, absorbing the highly polished manner of the Leiden fijnschilders. He worked in Leiden, Dordrecht and The Hague, painting genre scenes, portraits and candlelit compositions.

In 1692 he sailed to England hoping to become court painter to William and Mary. He produced unusually large canvases to compete with the incumbent Sir Godfrey Kneller, but the appointment never came. He also served as court painter to the Elector Palatine in Dusseldorf. His atmospheric work inspired Sheridan Le Fanu's gothic horror story Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter, later adapted by the BBC in 1979. He married Francoise van Diemen in 1679 and had seven children, though only one daughter survived to adulthood. He died in The Hague in 1706.