Gysbrecht Thys or Gysbrechts ThysGysbrecht Thys
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 ...

(baptized on 20 January 1617, Antwerp – after 1661) was a Flemish painter active in Antwerp known for his religious and mythological works as well as for his nudes. He also painted landscapes.Gysbrecht Thys, Schilder van Antwerpen
in: Cornelis de Bie, 'Het Gulden Cabinet', Jan Meyssens, Antwerp, 1661, p. 412 Very few paintings have been attributed to the artist to date.Gysbrecht Thys, ''Bacchanale''
at Artcurial
at Koller Auktionen on 23 March 2018, Zurich, lot 3036

Life

Very little is known about the life of Gysbrecht Thys. He was born in Antwerp. It is believed he was a cousin of the more famous history and portrait painter

Pieter Thijs Pieter Thijs, Peter Thijs or Pieter Thys (Antwerp, 1624 – Antwerp, 1677) was a Flemish painter of portraits as well as religious and history paintings. He was a very successful artist who worked for the courts in Brussels and The Hague as wel ...

. He was registered as a pupil at the local

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 ...

in the guild year 1629-1630. He became a master painter at the Guild in the guild year 1636-1637.Ph. Rombouts and Th. van Lerius, De liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche sint Lucasgilde
Volume 2, Antwerp, 1864, p. 4, on

Google books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

He married Catharina Lodewijcx on 20 January 1650. The date of his death is not known with certainty. He was described by Cornelis de Bie as being still alive when his book of artist biographies 'Het Gulden Cabinet' came out in 1661. The 19th century art historian Georg Kasper Nagler stated he died in 1684, citing

Jean-Baptiste Descamps Jean-Baptiste Descamps (; August 28, 1714 – June 30, 1791) was a French writer on art and artists, and painter of village scenes. He later founded an academy of art and his son later became a museum curator. Biography Descamps was born in Du ...

' ''La Vie des Peintres Flamands, Allemands et Hollandois'' (mid 18th century), although Descamps does not mention this death date.

Works

Thys was described by his Flemish contemporary Cornelis de Bie as a painter particularly skilled in nudes as well as in religious and mythological works. De Bie also credited him with being a good landscape painter. Later Dutch biographers Arnold Houbraken and Jacob Campo Weyerman claimed he was a portrait painter but this may have been a misreading of de Bie's ''Gulden Cabinet'' or a confusion with his cousin Pieter Thijs.Gysbrecht Thys Biography
in Arnold Houbraken, ''De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen'', 1718 De levens-beschryvingen...Volume II
, p 218, on the digital library of the

University of Utrecht Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

A work sold as a ''Bacchanal'' but now identified as a representation of the

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the '' Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the G ...

is signed and dated '… THYS F. 1653' (At Artcurial on 26 March 2014, lot 121). The Louvre has a photo on file of a painting of the artist, the location of which is unknown. This lost painting shows many similarities in style and in the figures with the composition depicting the Golden Age. Thys was also active as a figure painter and collaborated with specialist figure painters on so-called 'garland paintings'. Garland paintings are a type of still life invented in early 17th century Antwerp by

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 ...

and subsequently practised by leading Flemish still life painters, and in particular

Daniel Seghers Daniël Seghers or Daniel Seghers (3 December 1590 – 2 November 1661) was a Flemish Jesuit brother and Flemish Baroque painter, painter who specialized in flower still lifes. He is particularly well known for his contributions to the genre of ...

. Paintings in this genre typically show a flower or, less frequently, fruit garland around a devotional image or portrait. In the later development of the genre, the devotional image is replaced by other subjects such as portraits, mythological figures and allegorical scenes.Susan Merriam, ''Seventeenth-Century Flemish Garland Paintings. Still Life, Vision and the Devotional Image'', Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2012David Freedberg, "The Origins and Rise of the Flemish Madonnas in Flower Garlands, Decoration and Devotion", ''Münchener Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst'', xxxii, 1981, pp. 115–150. Garland paintings were typically collaborations between a still life and a figure painter. The ''Stone cartouche with a depiction of the Madonna and Child and John the Baptist surrounded by bouquets of flowers and fruits'' (At Koller Auktionen on 23 March 2018, Zurich, lot 3036) is an example of a collaboration on a garland painting by Thys and the Antwerp still life painter Joris van Son.

Notes

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thys, Gysbrecht Flemish Baroque painters Flemish history painters Flemish landscape painters Artists from Antwerp Painters from Antwerp 1617 births 1684 deaths