Pieter Boel

Variant namesPieter Boel Peter Boel Peeter Boel Pierre Boel Pietro Boel Pierre Bol Pieter Bol Pierre Boël Pierre Boul Pierre Boule

DatesBiographical dates: 1674 Dead: dead 1674-09-03 Born: born före 1622-10-22

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BiographyBiography: Animal- and still life painter, draughtsman, etcher and tapestry designer. The son of an engraver, publisher and art dealer, Pieter Boel was probably apprenticed at Antwerp to the animal- and still life painter Jan Fyt. He may have studied previously with Frans Snyders. Before becoming a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1650/1651, he had reputedly spent several years in Italy, working in Genua and Rome. None of his work from this period is known. From c. 1668/1669 he worked as a tapestry designer at the Gobelins tapestry workshop in Paris with Charles Le Brun and was appointed peintre ordinaire du Roi (Painter to the King) in the year of his death. Quite a few of his studies of live animals in oils, made for the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins, survive, mainly in French public collections. Boel dated only a few of his paintings, making it difficult to establish a chronology of his work. His paintings were influenced by the Antwerp animaland still life painters Fyt and Snyders, both of whom are mentioned as his teachers, as well as by Italian artists, in particular the Genoese painter Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. Boel is best known for his hunting scenes, some of which clearly show his debt to Snyders, but the dominant influence on his work was that of Fyt, particularly evident in his emphatic brushwork. Boel, however, was more restrained in his treatment. He borrowed and popularized, the theme of open-air hunting still lifes from Fyt. Boel occasionally collaborated with other artists, including Erasmus Quellinus II and Jacob Jordaens. His eldest son, Jan Baptist II became a painter; he completely assimilated his father’s style, which has sometimes led to attribution problems. The only one of his students who achieved a reputation of his own was David de Coninck, whose work has had a similar fate. Earlier seen as no more than a lesser follower of Fyt, Boel must now be considered one of the great animal painters of his time. He had a considerable influence on French 18th-century animal painters such as François Desportes and Jean-Baptist Oudry.

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