Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (18 January 1573 – 1621) was a Flemish-born Dutch

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

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 ...

and art dealer.Ambrosius Bosschaert
at The Netherlands Institute for Art History 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 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 Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,

, where he started his career, but he spent most of it in Middelburg (1587–1613), where he moved with his family because of the threat of religious persecution. He specialized in painting

s 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 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 and Abraham. 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 genre ...

also lived and worked in his workshop and accompanied him on his travels. Bosschaert later worked in Amsterdam (1614), Bergen op Zoom (1615–1616), Utrecht (1616–1619), and

Breda Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...

(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 had just become dean. The painter

Roelandt Savery Roelant Savery (or ''Roeland(t) Maertensz Saverij'', or ''de Savery'', or many variants; 1576 – buried 25 February 1639) was a Flanders-born Dutch Golden Age painter. Life Savery was born in Kortrijk. Like so many other artists, he belonge ...

(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 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 Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Republi ...

. 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, 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