Charles Emmanuel Biset

Charles Emmanuel Biset or Karel Emmanuel Biset (1633 in Mechelen – between 28 September 1693 and 1713) was a Flemish painter who had a peripatetic career working in various cities and countries including his hometown Mechelen, Paris, Annonay, Brussels, Antwerp and Breda. He worked in many genres including genre scenes of interiors with merry companies and gallery paintings, history painting, still life and portraiture.Charles Emmanuel Biset
at the Netherlands Institute for Art History

Life

Charles Emmanuel Biset was born on 26 December 1633 in Mechelen as Karel Emmanuel Biset. He was the son of the decorative painter Joris Biset who had trained under Michiel Coxie III, a grandson of the great Renaissance painter Michiel Coxie. Charles Emmanuel Biset likely trained under his father.

He worked in Mechelen from about 1640 until the early or mid-1650s. He was subsequently active in Paris where he is presumed to have worked for the court. Thereafter he is recorded for a while in Brussels before moving to Antwerp. Here he was active from 1661 to 1687.

He became a master in Antwerp's Guild of Saint Luke in 1662 and was its dean in 1674. He was also appointed a director of the Academy of Antwerp.Ad. Siret, ''BISET, Charles-Emmanuel''
in: Biographie nationale de Belgique, Volume 2, pp. 439–440

He married in 1662 with the painter Maria van Uden who was the daughter of the landscape painter Lucas van Uden. After her death in 1665, he began a relationship with her sister Anna. In 1670 he married Anna Cleymans. Their children were the painters Jan Andreas (also called Jan Baptist) and Jan Karel Biset. He enjoyed the patronage of Juan Domingo de Zuñiga y Fonseca, Count of Monterrey, and later the Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands for whom he may have worked on a quasi-exclusive basis for a while.

In 1687 he is recorded in Breda. It is possible he stayed there for the rest of his life while visiting Antwerp occasionally. The last record of his life dates to 28 September 1693 when he was in Antwerp.

The place and date of his death are not clear but he is believed to have died between 28 September 1693 and 1713.

He was the master of his nephew Jan Anthonie Coxie, who was the son of his sister Joanna and fellow Mechelen painter Jan Coxie.

Biset was highly regarded as an artist in his time as is attested by the fact that both the early Flemish biographer Cornelis de Bie and the Dutch biographer Jacob Campo Weyerman included him in their artist biographies.

Work

General

Biset was a very versatile artist and the range of his work is very diverse: he painted genre scenes with merry companies, gallery paintings, portraits, history paintings and still lifes. Because of this diversity and the specific genres and themes he worked in, it is believed he may have received some training from Gonzales Coques who also painted in such diverse areas.

Biset is regarded by some art historians as a follower of Coques. In fact, some works now ascribed to Biset were formerly attributed to Coques. This is for instance the case with the composition '' A Family Seated at a Table in an Elegant Garden Exterior'' (Sotheby's, 6 December 2006 in New York, lot 7), which was originally regarded as a collaboration between Gonzales Coques and some specialist artists such as Peeter Gijsels

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases