Cornelis Huysmans

Cornelis Huisman, also Corneille Huysmans, Cornelius Huysmans or Corneille de Malines (baptized 2 April 1648 in Antwerp; died 1 June 1727 in Mechelen) was a Flemish painter. He was the brother of Jan-Baptist Huysmans (1654–1716).

Biography

He was born to Hendrick Huysmans (bouwmeester) and Catharina van der Meyden, in a family of artists. Huysmans was the name of four Flemish painters who matriculated in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in the 17th century. Cornelis the elder, an uncle, apprenticed in 1633, passed for a mastership in 1636, and remained obscure. Jacob Huysmans, an uncle, apprenticed to Frans Wouters in 1650, wandered to England towards the close of the reign of Charles II, and competed with Sir Peter Lely as a fashionable portrait painter. He executed a portrait of the queen, Catherine of Braganza, now in the National Portrait Gallery (London).[1] His younger brother Jan Baptist Huysmans matriculated in 1676-1677 and became a landscape painter like his brother, who populated his landscapes with figures.[2] He registered numerous apprentices at Antwerp, and painted a landscape dated 1697 now in the Brussels museum.

Cornelis studied in Antwerp under the landscape painter Gaspar de Witte. Later, he worked with Jacques d'Arthois in Brussels, and in 1674 with Adam Frans van der Meulen in Maastricht. He painted woodside views with fancy backgrounds, half Italian, half Flemish, and he painted with great facility, and left numerous examples behind. At the outset of his career he practised at Malines, where he married in 1682, and there too he entered into some business connexion with van der Meulen, for whom he painted some backgrounds. In 1706 he withdrew to Antwerp, where he resided till 1717, returning then to Malines, where he died. Galleries in Paris, Brussels, Dresden, Berlin, Schwerin and Vienna display his works.

References

Huysmans in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

(Dutch) Huisman biography in De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (1718) by Arnold Houbraken, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature