Frans Francken the younger

Variant namesauktoriserad namnform: Frans Francken the younger

DatesBiographical dates: 1581 - 1642 Dead: dead 1642 Born: born 1581

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BiographyBiography: History painter and draughtsman. Frans Francken II is the best known and most talented member of an extended family of painters active at Antwerp from the late 16th to the late 17th century. Frans’ grandfather, Nicholas had moved to Antwerp with his family in the early 1560s and there he taught three of his sons, Hieronymus I, Frans I and Ambrosius. In the next generation, all the sons of Frans I became artists, including Frans II and his brothers, Thomas, Hieronymus II and Ambrosius II. Frans II almost certainly served an apprenticeship with his father, but possibly he also studied with his uncle, Hieronymus I, in Paris. In 1605 he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke, of which he later served as dean in 1616. In 1627 he became a member of the Antwerp militia company “De oude handboog”. As head of a large and productive workshop, Frans II was assisted by his sons, who followed in their father’s footsteps, but were weaker artists: Frans III, the best known member of the youngest generation of the Francken family, Hieronymus III, who specialized in religious subjects, and Ambrosius III. Frans registered only one apprentice with the guild, but, in addition to his own sons, he certainly employed his three brothers and his sons-in-law as well as other apprentices and must have been absolved from registering them. An extremely productive and imaginative artist, Frans II was one of the leading Antwerp painters of expressively rendered small-scale cabinet pictures with historical, biblical, or mythological subjects, as well as allegories. He also painted larger altarpieces for churches at Antwerp. There are no dated paintings before 1600. His stature as an artist is not so much derived from his extensive output as from his innovative subject matter. His depictions of luxuriously decorated collectors’ cabinets and gallery interiors painted after c. 1612, introduced a new genre of painting that influenced a number of artists, including Jan Brueghel II, Peter Paul Rubens and David Teniers II, while his early paintings of “monkeys’ kitchens” – allegorical scenes of human vice, such as smoking and gluttony, enacted by monkeys – set the direction for Jan van Kessel as well as Teniers II. Frans II frequently collaborated with other artists, painting the staffage in landscapes by Abraham Govaerts, Joos de Momper II and Tobias Verhaecht, in architectural scenes by Bartholomeus van Bassen and Peeter Neeffs I. He also collaborated with flower painters, among them Jan Brueghel I and Jan Brueghel II and Daniël Seghers. The fact that the same Christian names were used by three generations of painters in the Francken family, who used identical signatures, has caused a great deal of confusion in attributing their various works. Frans II used the abbreviated signature “den jon F. Franck”, i.e. “the younger”, until his father died in 1616. From 1621 onward, he often signed his work “d.o. Franck”, i.e. “the elder”. Records show that Frans II painted many works for the Antwerp art dealer Christian van Immerzeel, who sold them to Spanish collectors. Van Immerzeel’s lists of works for sale also mention numerous studio replicas and copies of Frans’ works.

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