Jean Baptiste Morel

Flower Piece with Variegated Tulips

Jean Baptiste Morel or Jan Baptist Morel (1662 – 1732) was a Flemish still life painter who specialized in flower pieces and garlands.

Life

Jean Baptiste Morel was born in Antwerp and studied c. 1674 under the Antwerp still life painter Nicolaes van Verendael who specialized in flower pieces and garlands.[1] He was successful as a painter in Antwerp but moved to Brussels after 1695 to respond to the significant demand for his work there. He became a member of the Brussels Guild of Saint Luke in 1699.[2] He obtained commissions from the governor of the Southern Netherlands whose palaces in Brussels he decorated.[3]

He returned to Antwerp in 1710 as a wealthy man. He had problems with the local Guild of Saint Luke as he refused to join it. The Guild went so far as to seize works that he had exhibited. He then moved back to Brussels in 1729 and rejoined the Guild there. He married twice, first in 1689 with Marie Lamboy and a second time with Anne- Marie van Heymissen, who came from an aristocratic family of Brussels.[2] He died in Brussels probably in 1732.[1]

Work

Like his master, Morel was a still-life painter specialized in flower pieces and garlands. His works are in the collections of the museums in Chartres and Lille and in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne.[4]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Jean Baptiste Morel at the Netherlands Institute for Art History (Dutch)
  2. 2.0 2.1 Oeuvres; études et notices relatives à l'histoire de l'art dans les Pays-Bas (1920), Volume 2, p. 283 (French)
  3. Jean Baptiste Morel (referred to as Nicolaas Morel) in: A.J. van der Aa, Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden], Volume 12.2, J.J. van Brederode, Haarlem 1852, pp. 1053-4 (Dutch)
  4. Jan Baptist Morel, Garland of Flowers, 1720-1730
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