Jan Fyt

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Big Dog, Dwarf and Boy, 1652

Jan (or Johannes) Fyt (or Fijt) (1611 - 1661), Flemish animal painter, was born at Antwerp and baptized on 15 June 1611.

He was registered apprentice to Hans van den Berghe in 1621. Professionally van den Berghe was a restorer of old pictures rather than a painter of new ones. At the age of twenty, Johannes Fyt entered the guild of St Luke as a master, and from that time until his death in 1661, he produced a vast number of paintings in which the bold facility of Snyders is united to the powerful effects of Rembrandt, and harmonies of gorgeous tone are not less conspicuous than freedom of touch and a true semblance of nature.

There never was such a master of technical processes as Fyt in the "rendering of animal life in its most varied forms. He may have been less correct in outline, less bold in action than Snyders, but he was much more skilful and more true in the reproduction of the coat of deer, dogs, greyhounds, hares and monkeys, whilst in realizing the plumage of peacocks, woodcocks, ducks, hawks, and cocks and hens, he had not his equal, nor was any artist even of the Dutch school more effective in relieving his compositions with accessories of tinted cloth, porcelain ware, vases and fruit.

He was not clever at figures, and he sometimes trusted for these to the co-operation of Cornelius Schut or Willeborts, whilst his architectural backgrounds were sometimes executed by Quellyn. " Silenus amongst Fruit and Flowers," in the Harrach collection at Vienna, "Diana and her Nymphs with the Produce of the Chase," in the Belvedere at Vienna, and "Dead Game and Fruit in front of a Triumphal Arch," belonging to Baron von Rothschild at Vienna, are specimens of the co-operation respectively of Schut, Willeborts and Quellyn. They are also Fyt's masterpieces. The earliest dated work of the master is a cat grabbing at a piece of dead poultry near a hare and birds, belonging to Baron Cetto at Munich, and executed in 1644. The latest is a "Dead Snipe with Ducks," of 1660, sold with the Jager collection at Cologne in 1871.

Great power is shown in the bear and boar hunts at Munich and Ravensworth castle. A "Hunted Roedeer with Dogs in the Water," in the Berlin: Museum, has some of the life and more of the roughness of Snyders, but lacks variety of tint and finish. A splendid specimen is the Page and Parrot near a table covered with game, guarded by a dog staring at a monkey, in the Wallace collection. With the needle and the brush Fyt was equally clever. He etched 16 plates, and those representing dogs are of their kind unique.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.