Jan Weenix
(c.1642 - September 19, 1719) |
|
Portraits, Genre Scenes, Still life Art Work
| Name: |
Jan Weenix |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
| Nationality: |
Dutch |
| Birth: |
c.1642 |
| Death: |
September 19, 1719 |
| Website: |
|
| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
|
|
Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Portraits, Genre Scenes, Still life |
| Medium: |
|
| Method: |
|
| Style: |
|
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
|
|
|
Biography
| A virtuoso painter of still lifes featuring dead game, Jan Weenix gained admirers throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for his beautifully rendered hares, partridges, and other animals. Goethe and Reynolds both praised him while his influence can be found in the paintings of Jean Baptiste Chardin, Jean Baptiste Oudry, Alexandre Desportes, and Gustave Courbet. Jan was the son and pupil of the landscape and genre painter Jan Baptist Weenix* (1621-1660/1); his birthdate is most often cited as 1642, although some sources say 1640. Jan moved with his father to Utrecht in 1648 and was listed as a member of its guild from 1664 until 1668. The following year he must have moved to Amsterdam, where he married in 1679. He remained there for the rest of his life. During his early period Jan imitated his father's Italianate landscapes, which featured genre figures (see, for example, his Merry Company, dated 1667, Paris, Musee du Petit Palais). However, during the early 1680s (or around the time he moved to Amsterdam) he shifted toward still lifes with dead game (e.g., Still Life with Dead Hare, signed and dated 1682/3, Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle), working sufficiently close to his father's manner that the two artists are sometimes confused. Jan's consummate skill at handling the various textures of fur, feathers, velvet, and marble, as well as his decorative compositional skill, is beautifully demonstrated in Hunting Piece on Marble Table (dated 1680/5, Vaduz, Liechtensteinische Kunstsammlung). Between 1702 and 1714, working for the Elector Palatine Johan Wilhelm in Dusseldorf and Bensberg, Jan produced his most ambitious game pieces. He decorated the elector's palace at Bensberg with a series of twelve hunting still lifes set in landscapes (some measuring 3.5 x 5.5 meters), which are today in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. These pictures are dependent to some extent on the paintings of Jan's cousin Melchior d'Hondecoeter, who was working in Amsterdam from 1663 on. Both artists used settings featuring urns and statues, juxtaposing animate and inanimate forms with decorative irony. Though he borrowed motifs from many sources (including Steen, Wouwerman, Claude, Both, and Pynacker), his animals are generally his own invention. Immensely popular, Jan's paintings influenced the interior decor of eighteenth-century Dutch mansions. Jan returned to Amsterdam in 1714. With the death of Weenix in 1719 and of Dirck Valkenburg the following year, the subject of the game piece died out in Holland, only to be revived in eighteenth-century France. |
Samples of Work
|
|
