- NameAdrian van Stalbemt
- Sexmale
- Nationality/Datesborn 1580, dead 1662
BiographyFlemish landscape- , history- and genre painter
and etcher. After the fall of Antwerp (1585) his
Protestant family emigrated to Middelburg, but Adriaen
later returned to his native city. In 1609, at the
age of 29, he became a master in the Antwerp Guild
of St. Luke, but by then he must already have had
something of a career behind him. Nothing is known
about his teachers or his early training. Stalbemt was
later a dean of the Guild in 1618 and in 1632-1633;
he trained three apprentices. At Antwerp he is known
to have collaborated with both Jan Brueghel I and
Frans Francken II. In 1633 he spent ten months in
England, probably summoned by King Charles I.
Here he painted, among other works, two views of
Greenwich in collaboration with Jan van Belcamp.
In addition to landscapes in the manner of Jan
Brueghel I and Gillis van Coninxloo, woodland
scenes with hunters or peasants, and representations
of village festivals, Stalbemt also painted religious,
mythological and allegorical scenes. He was a highly
eclectic artist whose oeuvre shows great stylistic variety,
and which, because of the small number of dated
works, can only with difficulty be catalogued chronologically.
One group of paintings previously attributed
to the German painter Adam Elsheimer, some of
which might date around 1609 or earlier, was reattributed
to Stalbemt by Andrews (1973). Stalbemt’s
earlier work, thus, consists in part of history paintings,
with a compositional scheme clearly reminiscent
of Elsheimer, whose work he may have known
through the Flemish Elsheimer-follower David
Teniers I, who had returned north from Italy in 1605.
There is no record of an Italian sojourn by Stalbemt,
but the signed Drunkenness of Bacchus (Paris, Coll. M.
Haim-Gairac), in which the figures resemble those of
the early Elsheimer-influenced group discussed by
Andrews, is also clearly derived from the Mediterranean
seascapes of the Rome-based Flemish landscapist
Paul Bril. Other works reveal the influence of
Jan Brueghel I in their meticulous depiction of a
wooded landscape. The artist’s later works, after c.
1621, reveal the influence of Hendrick van Balen.