Hendrick van Balen d.ä.

Variant namesauktoriserad namnform: Hendrick van Balen d.ä.

DatesBiographical dates: 1575 - 1632 Born: born 1575 Dead: dead 1632

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BiographyBiography: History painter and designer of stained glass windows. The eldest son of Antwerp merchant Willem van Balen, Hendrick received a good formal education. In 1592 he was registered as a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke, of which he later served as dean in 1608/1609 and 1609/1610. According to Karel van Mander (Het Schilder-Boeck, 1604), he was a pupil of Adam van Noort, although this cannot be confirmed. Between 1595 and 1600 Van Balen travelled to Italy, visiting Rome, presumably Venice – where he may have come into contact with the German painter Hans Rottenhammer, given the stylistic similarity between their works – and other cities. While there is no record of his travels, on his return to Antwerp he joined the Guild of Romanists – membership of which was restricted to those who had visited Rome – and served as Dean in 1613. From 1602 onwards Van Balen’s name appears regularly in the records of the Antwerp painters’ Guild, especially as a teacher. In 1602–1603 four apprentices were registered with the Guild, and the guild registers contain the record of countless others in the following years. For 30 years he ran a large successful studio and had many pupils, including Frans Snyders and Anthony van Dyck (in 1609/1610). Three of Van Balen’s sons became painters: Jan, Gaspard and Hendrick II. His daughter Maria married the painter Theodor van Thulden in 1635. In 1613 Van Balen travelled on a diplomatic mission to the Northern Netherlands in the company of Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel I. Early in his career Van Balen painted a number of large-scale altarpieces for Antwerp churches that reflect the Romanist influence of his presumed teacher, Van Noort for example, the Resurrection for the St. Jacobskerk, where he was later buried. His later altarpieces, such as the Gathering of Manna (Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten), with richer and more subtle colouring, were clearly painted after Van Dyck joined his studio. Van Balen is, however, best known as a painter of intimate, cabinet-sized pictures on copper or wood, often with mythological or allegorical subjects. Other popular subjects were the “Four Elements”, the “Banquet of the Gods” and the “Wedding of Peleus and Thetis”. The slim, gracefully proportioned figures in Van Balen’s work of the first decade of the 1600s are very similar in style to those of Rottenhammer, although his palette is subtler and more luminous than the bold primary colours of the German master. These scenes allowed the artist to display his attractive nudes in paradisiacal settings. Van Balen often collaborated with other Antwerp artists, most frequently with his friend Jan Brueghel I, for whom he provided figures for landscapes and for fruit- and flower garlands. He also worked together with Joos de Momper II, Lucas van Uden, Jan Wildens, and Frans Snyders and, after the death of Jan Brueghel I in 1625, with the latter’s son, Jan Brueghel II.

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