Pieter Thijs

Pieter Thijs, Portrait of the Van de Werve Family, 1661. Private Collection.

Pieter Thijs, or Peeter Tysens (Antwerp, 1624?–1677) was a Flemish Baroque painter whose work was heavily influenced by the courtly and elegant style of Anthony van Dyck.

Biography

Grisaille portrait of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, inside a flower garland painted by an unknown painter, probably a colleague at Leopold's court or in the Antwerp artist's guild.

He joined Antwerp's Guild of St. Luke in 1644–45, and soon became successful as a painter of allegorical and mythological histories for patrons in both the Southern Netherlands and the Dutch Republic. He also painted numerous altarpieces for churches in Flanders and Brabant, aristocratic portraits and occasionally added figures to works by the painter Pieter Boel. From 1647 onwards, he became a portrait painter for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, whilst still working for the rival House of Orange in The Hague.^[1]

He has a name for painting large family portraits, a genre made popular by his teacher Anthony van Dyck.^[2] He had a son by the same name and is registered as the teacher of Jan Fransicus Lauwereyssens.^[2] Though a popular portrait painter, according to Cornelis de Bie's list of artist biographies in Het Gulden Cabinet, his likenesses were criticized for being unlike their subjects.^[3]

References

• Vlieghe, Hans (1998). Flemish Art and Architecture, 1585-1700. Pelican history of art. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07038-1

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