Gillis van Coninxloo (now also referred to as Gillis van Coninxloo II but previously referred to as Gillis van Coninxloo III) (24 January 1544 – January 1607) was a
Flemish painter of
landscape
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...
s who played an important role in the development of Northern landscape art at the turn of the 17th century. He spent the last 20 years of his life abroad, first in
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
and later in the
Dutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...
.
[Gillis van Coninxloo]
at the Netherlands Institute for Art History
The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: ), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in document ...
Life
He was born in
Antwerp
Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...
and studied under
, Lenaert Kroes and
Gillis Mostaert. He travelled in
France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
after completing his training. He became a member of the Antwerp
Guild of Saint Luke
The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was iden ...
in 1570 and worked in Antwerp until 1585 when
Antwerp fell to the Spanish. He left first for
Middelburg and then in 1587 for
Frankenthal
Frankenthal (Pfalz) (; ) is a town in southwestern Germany, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
History
Frankenthal was first mentioned in 772. In 1119 an Augustinians, Augustinian monastery was built here, the ruins of which — known, aft ...
where he was active until 1595. He then moved to
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...
where he died in 1607.
[
He had many pupils including ]Pieter Brueghel the Younger
Pieter Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Younger ( , ; ; between 23 May and 10 October 1564 – between March and May 1638) was a Flemish painting, Flemish painter known for numerous copies after his father Pieter Bruegel the Elder's ...
, Govert Govertsz van Arnhem, Willem van den Bundel, Gillis van Coninxloo III, Jonas van Merle, Hercules Seghers and Jacques van der Wijen.[
]
Work
Coninxloo ranks as one of the most important Flemish landscape painters of around the turn of the 17th century. He exercised a strong influence on Jan Brueghel the Elder
Jan Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Elder ( , ; ; 1568 – 13 January 1625) was a Flemish painting, Flemish painter and Draughtsmanship, draughtsman. He was the younger son of the eminent Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, Flemish ...
, Pieter Schoubroeck, Roelandt Savery, and other Flemish and Dutch landscape painters of this period.
His early landscapes were often Northern Mannerist
Northern Mannerism is the form of Mannerism found in the visual arts north of the Alps in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Styles largely derived from Italian Mannerism were found in the Netherlands and elsewhere from around the mid-century, es ...
versions of the established world landscape type, though with close views of trees already narrowing the panoramic view. Beginning in the 1590s Coninxloo introduced a new approach into Flemish landscape painting, with close-up views of forests reminiscent of Albrecht Altdorfer
Albrecht Altdorfer ( – 12 February 1538) was a German painter, engraver and architect of the Renaissance working in Regensburg, Bavaria. Along with Lucas Cranach the Elder and Wolf Huber he is regarded to be the main representative of the Da ...
and the Danube school nearly a century earlier and almost or entirely shutting out a distant view. While earlier forest landscapes had used forests as the backdrop for human activity, van Coninxloo turned them into the subject proper by submerging tiny human figures in elaborate compositions of trees on a hugely exaggerated scale. A ''Forest Landscape'' of 1598 in the Liechtenstein Collection is the first work to take this approach to its extreme: the sky is only visible in a few patches between branches and a single tiny human figure reclines under a tree.[Vlieghe, 175-176] This painting achieves great intensity and atmospheric quality through its fine shades of brown and green and its accentuated handling of light.
During his stay in Frankenthal from 1588 to 1595, he influenced several better known Flemish émigré landscape painters, who are now collectively referred to as the 'Frankenthal School'. The early 17th century art historian wrote about Coninxloo in his '' Schilder-boeck''. Van Mander stated that Coninxloo's teacher Pieter Coeke van Aelst was his cousin, and that ''I know at this time of no better landscape painter, and I notice that they are following his manner very much in Holland''.[Larry Silver, ''Peasant Scenes and Landscapes: The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market'', University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, pp. 164–165]
Works
Some of his paintings are:
* ''"The Judgment of Midas"'' (Dresden)
* ''"Latona"'' (Hermitage, St. Petersburg)
* ''"Landscape with Venus and Adonis"'' (Frankenthal)
* ''"Landscape with Duck Hunters" ( Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken)''
Notes
References
*Sutton, Peter C., ed. (1987). ''Masters of 17th-century Dutch Landscape Painting''. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts.
* Vlieghe, H. (1998). ''Flemish art and architecture, 1585-1700''. Yale University Press Pelican history of art. New Haven: Yale University Press.
External links
Web Gallery of Art: Biography of Gillis van Coninxloo
* ttp://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/coninxloo_gillis_van.html Gillis van Coninxloo on Artcyclopedia*
Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints
', a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which includes material on Gillis van Coninxloo (see index)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coninxloo, Gillis Van
1544 births
1607 deaths
People from the Spanish Netherlands
Flemish Mannerist painters
Flemish landscape painters
Painters from Antwerp