Jan van Huysum

Jan van Huysum
"Jan van Huysum" by Arnold Boonen, ca.1720
Born	(1682-04-15)April 15, 1682 Amsterdam
Died	February 8, 1747(1747-02-08) (aged 64) Amsterdam
Nationality	Dutch
Known for	Painting

Jan van Huysum, also spelled Huijsum (April 15, 1682 – February 8, 1749), was a Dutch painter.

Biography

Vase of Flowers, 1722

Jan van Huysum Fruit Piece, oil on panel, 1722

He was the brother of Jacob van Huysum, the son of the flower painter Justus van Huysum, and the grandson of Jan van Huysum I, who is said to have been expeditious in decorating doorways, screens and vases. A picture by Justus is preserved in the gallery of Brunswick, representing "Orpheus and the Beasts in a wooded landscape", and here we have some explanation of his son's fondness for landscapes of a conventional and Arcadian kind; for Jan van Huysum, though skilled as a painter of still life, believed himself to possess the genius of a landscape painter.

Half of his pictures in public galleries are landscapes, views of imaginary lakes and harbours with impossible ruins and classic edifices, and woods of tall and motionless trees-the whole very glossy and smooth, and entirely lifeless. The earliest dated work of this kind is that of 1717, in the Louvre, a grove with maidens culling flowers near a tomb, ruins of a portico, and a distant palace on the shores of a lake bounded by mountains.

Legacy

Some of the finest of van Huysum's fruit and flower pieces have been in English private collections: those of 1723 in the earl of Ellesmere's gallery, others of 1730-1732 in the collections of Hope and Ashburton. One of the best examples is now in the National Gallery, London (1736–1737). No public museum has finer and more numerous specimens than the Louvre, which boasts of four landscapes and six panels with still life; then come Berlin and Amsterdam with four fruit and flower pieces; then St Petersburg, Munich, Hanover, Dresden, the Hague, Brunswick, Vienna, Carlsruhe, Boston and Copenhagen. Van Huysum had several followers, such as Jan van Os and Johannes de Bosch.

• Selected works
• 
  Terracotta Vase with Flowers and Fruits
• 
  Flowers and Fruits
• 
  Flowers, Fruits and Insects
• 
  "Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn", 1724

External media

External videos
van Huysum, Vase with Flowers, Smarthistory

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• "Jan van Huysum". National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 2008-01-22. Includes biography and two pictures.
• "Jan van Huysum (1682 - 1749)". Wallace Collection. Retrieved 2008-01-22. Includes brief biography and one picture.
• "Jan van Huysum". ArtCyclopedia. Retrieved 2008-01-22. Links to entries in numerous online museums and public art galleries.
• Dutch and Flemish paintings from the Hermitage, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Huysum (cat. no. 14)