Joos van Craesbeeck (''c''. 1605/06 – ''c''. 1660) was a Flemish baker and a

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

who played an important role in the development of Flemish

genre painting Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached ...

in the mid-17th century through his tavern scenes and dissolute portraits. His genre scenes depict low-life figures as well as scenes of middle-class people. He created a few religiously themed compositions.Konrad Renger, ''Craesbeeck raesbeke Joos van,'' Grove Art Online.

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, ccessed 1 March 2015/ref>

Life

Joos van Craesbeeck was born in

Neerlinter Linter () is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant. The municipality comprises the towns of Drieslinter, Melkwezer, Neerhespen (where the canine school of the Belgian police is situated), Neerlinter, Orsmaal-Gussenhoven ...

(now a village in

Flemish Brabant Flemish Brabant ( nl, Vlaams-Brabant ; french: Brabant flamand ) is a province of Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders on (clockwise from the North) the Belgian provinces of Antwerp, Limburg, Liège, Walloon Brabant, Haina ...

, Belgium). His father was also called Joos and is believed to have been a baker. His mother's name was Gertruid van Callenborch. In 1630 or 1631 Joos van Craesbeeck married Johanna Tielens. His wife's father was a baker but her family also counted artists among its members: the landscape painter Jan Tielens was her uncle while two of her uncles on her mother's side were the sculptors Melchior and Caspar Grison.''Joos van Craesbeeck''
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 ...

Joos van Craesbeeck -The Temptation of St Anthony

The Tielens family was also responsible for the operation of the bakery in

Antwerp Citadel Antwerp Citadel ( es, Castillo de Amberes, nl, Kasteel van Antwerpen) was a pentagonal bastion fort built to defend and dominate the city of Antwerp in the early stages of the Dutch Revolt. It has been described as "doubtlesse the most matchlesse ...

. When the painter

Adriaen Brouwer Adriaen Brouwer (, in Oudenaarde – January 1638, in Antwerp) was a Flemish painter active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century.

was imprisoned in the citadel, van Craesbeeck likely got to know him. Based on information provided by contemporary Flemish biographer

Cornelis de Bie Cornelis de Bie (10 February 1627 – ) was a Flemish '' rederijker'', poet, jurist and minor politician from Lier. He is the author of about 64 works, mostly comedies. He is known internationally today for his biographical sketches of Flemish ...

in his book ''

Het Gulden Cabinet ''Het Gulden Cabinet vande Edel Vry Schilder-Const'' or ''The Golden Cabinet of the Noble Liberal Art of Painting'' is a book by the 17th-century Flemish notary and ''Chamber of rhetoric, rederijker'' Cornelis de Bie published in Antwerp. Writte ...

'' van Craesbeeck is believed to have become Brouwer's pupil and best friend. Their relationship was described by de Bie as 'Soo d’oude songhen, soo pypen de jonghen' (As the old ones sang, so the young ones chirp').''Liechtenstein, the Princely Collections'', Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985, p. 304-305 The stylistic similarities of van Craesbeeck's early work with that of Brouwer seems to corroborate such pupilage. Joos van Craesbeeck - The painter’s studio

Joos van Craesbeeck - The painter’s studio

Van Craesbeeck became a master in Antwerp'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 ...

in 1633–1634 as a baker and painter. In 1637 he was widowed and obtained an inheritance. That year he is recorded as the owner of a new house with a bakery in Antwerp. From this time onwards he was able to dedicate himself full-time to painting. The movements of van Craesbeek between 1637 and 1651, the year he became master in the Brussels Guild of Saint Luke are not clear. It is likely that his move to Brussels was linked to that of

David Teniers the Younger David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II (bapt. 15 December 1610 – 25 April 1690) was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile arti ...

who settled in Brussels on 7 September 1650. In 1653,

Adriaen Rombouts Adriaen Rombouts (c. 1640 – in or after 1670) was a Flemish genre painter active in Brussels in the middle of the 17th century. He is known for his indoor scenes with peasants engaging in play, eating and drinking. After Brouwer's death in 1638 van Craesbeeck turned to other artists for inspiration and borrowed ideas from contemporary Dutch painters. Antwerp painters remained, however, his main source of inspiration. He was able to find his own individual interpretation of the everyday subjects, which formed the bulk of his output. His palette became dominated by browns and greys. In a still later phase when he was a resident of Brussels, he painted his mature work, which was largely independent of Brouwer. A set of works from this period is characterized by its vivid colours and the use of his own repertory of figures: bearded men with flat or fur-decked caps, women with white bonnets or conspicuous straw hats.

Tronies

His master Brouwer played an important role in the development of the genre of the '

tronie A tronie is a type of work common in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that depicts an exaggerated or characteristic facial expression. These works were not intended as portraits but as studies of expression, type, physiognom ...

'. The term tronie typically refers to figure studies not intended to depict an identifiable person, but rather to investigate varieties of expression. Tronies are thus a form of

in a portrait format. Van Craesbeeck was also a talented practitioner of the genre. Many of his tronies are in fact self-portraits. He painted at least five presumed self-portraits in which he depicts himself in a 'dissolute' manner. The dissolute self-portrait was a form of self representation of artists that arose in Dutch and Flemish genre painting in the 17th century. It was an inversion of the Renaissance ideal of the 'pictor doctus', which regarded the artist as an intellectual and gentleman. This ideal was replaced by the new model of the prodigal artist characterized by his creative inspiration and talents. These self-portraits aimed to emphasize the artists' dissolute nature by creating associations with traditional moral themes such as the ''Five Senses'' and the ''Prodigal Son in the tavern''. Van Craesbeeck painted himself four times in low-life guises. These self-portraits can also be regarded as

s, since they depict the artist with exaggerated expressions, and often represent one of the five senses. In his self-portraits, van Craesbeeck typically represented the sense of 'taste', which he expressed by painting himself as a drinker or a smoker. An example is ''The Smoker'' in the

Louvre Museum The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

. Most frequently he depicted himself as a drinker as in the ''Self-Portrait as a Drinker''. This painting shows him grinning, with bulging eyes, untamed hair and dressed in peasant's clothes. He is clutching a full glass of wine. The rough style of these self-portraits is typical for the peasant vernacular of the genre. His lively, boorish expressions show his deep understanding of the peasant character.Ingrid A. Cartwright, ''Hoe schilder hoe wilder: Dissolute Self-Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Art'', Advisors: Wheelock, Arthur, PhD, 2007 Dissertation, University of Maryland University of Maryland (College Park, Md.) Joos van Craesbeeck - The lute player

Van Craesbeeck often developed on the theme of the five senses. His composition the ''Painter’s Studio'' is a tableau vivant showing figures symbolizing the Five Senses seated around a table while the artist is working at his easel. Each figure in the group represents one of the senses: a lute-player (Hearing), a man holding a wineglass (Taste), a man with a pipe (Smell), an intimate couple (Touch) and a woman reading (Sight).

Tavern scenes

He painted many tavern interiors. Some of these works are a reflection of the new themes that had been introduced in genre painting by the Northern followers of Caravaggio such as that of the musician. An example is the ''Lute Player'' (

Liechtenstein Museum The Liechtenstein Museum is a private art museum in Vienna, Austria. It contains much of the art collection of its owners, the House of Liechtenstein, Princely Family of Liechtenstein, rulers of the principality of Liechtenstein. It includes import ...

), which shows two women entertaining a cavalier, who seems to have passed out with a full glass of wine in front of him. A flute hanging above the head of an old man leaning over the shoulder of the female lute player symbolises the man's thoughts. Van Craesbeeck modernized the pattern introduced by the Caravaggisti of showing figures seated around a table with those in front shown in silhouette by more full describing the interior space, showing the effect of the daylight and opting for a more vertical format. Paintings such as ''Death is Violent and Fast'' are typical of his small, theatrical images of

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...

brawls crowded with violent expressive figures already depicted by Brouwers. A tiny skeleton placed inside a tankard in the lower right foreground plays the role of death in the composition.

Guardroom scene

Van Craesbeeck also painted '' A guardroom interior with soldiers playing cards'', which falls within the genre of the guardroom scene. A guardroom scene typically depicts an interior scene with officers and soldiers engaged in merrymaking. Guardroom scenes often included mercenaries and prostitutes dividing booty, harassing captives or indulging in other forms of reprehensible activities.

"Piskijken"

He also painted a few paintings in the subgenre referred to as "piskijken" ("pee looking"), which typically shows a woman with a doctor or quack performing a pregnancy test by looking at a sample of her urine. An example is '' The doctor's visit'' (

Brukenthal Museum The Brukenthal National Museum ( ro, Muzeul Național Brukenthal; german: Brukenthalmuseum) is a museum in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania, established in the late 18th century by Samuel von Brukenthal (1721-1803) in his city palace. Baron Brukent ...

), which shows in the background a young woman who seems to have collapsed and is being comforted. In the foreground stands a person (a doctor or a quack?) who is holding up a vial with the woman's urine. A shadow of a foetus is visible in the vial, a sign that the young woman is pregnant.Claire Witlox, ''De kunst van het piskijken in de Gouden Eeuw in Nederland, Over de ontwikkeling van een apart genrestuk'', Master thesis 2011, Faculty of Humanities, University of Utrecht, p. 18

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Craesbeeck, Joos Van Flemish Baroque painters Flemish history painters Flemish genre painters Artists from Antwerp Artists from Brussels Painters from Antwerp Painters from Brussels 1625 births 1678 deaths