Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (18 January 1573 – 1621) was a Flemish-born Dutch still life painter and art dealer.Ambrosius Bosschaert
at

The Netherlands Institute for Art History The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

He is recognised as one of the earliest painters who created floral still lifes as an independent genre.Irene Haberland, ''Bosschaert family''
at Oxford Art Online He founded a dynasty of painters who continued his style of floral and fruit painting and turned

Middelburg Middelburg may refer to: Places and jurisdictions Europe * Middelburg, Zeeland, the capital city of the province of Zeeland, southwestern Netherlands ** Roman Catholic Diocese of Middelburg, a former Catholic diocese with its see in the Zeeland ...

into the leading centre for flower painting in the Dutch Republic.

Biography

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder - Still-Life with flowers - Google Art Project

He was born in Antwerp, where he started his career, but he spent most of it in

(1587–1613), where he moved with his family because of the threat of religious persecution. He specialized in painting still lifes with flowers, which he signed with the monogram AB (the B in the A). At the age of twenty-one, he joined the city's

Guild of Saint Luke The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was ide ...

and later became dean. Not long after, Bosschaert married and established himself as a leading figure in the fashionable floral painting genre. He had three sons who all became flower painters: Ambrosius II,

Johannes Johannes is a Medieval Latin form of the personal name that usually appears as "John" in English language contexts. It is a variant of the Greek and Classical Latin variants (Ιωάννης, ''Ioannes''), itself derived from the Hebrew name '' Yeh ...

and

Abraham Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Je ...

. His brother-in-law

Balthasar van der Ast Balthasar van der Ast (1593/94 – 7 March 1657) was a Dutch Golden Age painter who specialized in still lifes of flowers and fruit, as well as painting a number of remarkable shell still lifes; he is considered to be a pioneer in the gen ...

also lived and worked in his workshop and accompanied him on his travels. Bosschaert later worked in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

(1614),

Bergen op Zoom Bergen op Zoom (; called ''Berrege'' in the local dialect) is a municipality and a city located in the south of the Netherlands. Etymology The city was built on a place where two types of soil meet: sandy soil and marine clay. The sandy soil ...

(1615–1616),

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

(1616–1619), and Breda (1619). In 1619 when he moved to Utrecht, his brother-in-law van der Ast entered the Utrecht Guild of St. Luke, where the renowned painter

Abraham Bloemaert Abraham Bloemaert (25 December 1566 – 27 January 1651) was a Dutch painter and printmaker in etching and engraving. He was initially working in the style of the " Haarlem Mannerists", but in the 16th century altered his style in line with the ...

had just become dean. The painter Roelandt Savery (1576–1639) entered the St. Luke's guild in Utrecht at about the same time. Savery had considerable influence on the Bosschaert dynasty. After Bosschaert died in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...

while on commission there for a flower piece, Balthasar van der Ast took over his workshop and pupils in Middelburg.

Style

His bouquets were painted symmetrically and with scientific accuracy in small dimensions and normally on copper. They sometimes included symbolic and religious meanings. At the time of his death, Bosschaert was working on an important commission in the Hague. That piece is now in the collection in Stockholm. Bosschaert was one of the first artists to specialize in flower still life painting as a stand-alone subject. He started a tradition of painting detailed flower bouquets, which typically included tulips and roses, and inspired the genre of Dutch flower painting. Thanks to the booming seventeenth-century Dutch art market, he became highly successful, as the inscription on one of his paintings attests.''Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase'', the painting with inscription
at the National Gallery His works commanded high prices although he never achieved the level of prestige of

Jan Brueghel the Elder Jan Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Elder (, ; ; 1568 – 13 January 1625) was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. He was the son of the eminent Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A close friend and frequent collabora ...

, the Antwerp master who contributed to the floral genre.

Legacy

His sons and his pupil and brother-in-law, Balthasar van der Ast, were among those to uphold the Bosschaert dynasty which continued until the mid-17th century. It may not be a coincidence that this trend coincided with a national obsession with exotic flowers which made flower portraits highly sought after. Although he was highly in demand, he did not create many pieces because he was also employed as an art dealer.

References

Bibliography

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bosschaert, Ambrosius 1573 births 1621 deaths Flemish Baroque painters Flower artists Dutch Golden Age painters Dutch male painters Artists from Antwerp Painters from Middelburg Dutch still life painters Flemish still life painters