Jacob Fopsen van Es

Variant namesprimary name: Jacob Fopsen van Es

DatesBiographical dates: 1596 - 1666 Dead: dead 1666 Born: born 1596

Gender

Nationality

BiographyBiography: Painter of still lifes, mainly breakfast and banquet pieces and flowers. First recorded in 1617 at Antwerp, where he was admitted as a master in the Guild of St. Luke. There is, however, no record of his having served an apprenticeship in the city. Possibly, he was of Frisian descent. He spent his whole career in Antwerp, but is said to have been in Rome in 1636. One of his four sons joined the Antwerp guild in 1648, but it is not known which one. Two apprentices are recorded: Jacob Gillis (1621/1622) and Jan van Thienen (1623). Numerous mentions of works by Jacob Fopsen van Es in the inventories of 17th-century Antwerp collectors testify to his success. He seems to have enjoyed certain esteem among his fellow artists; Rubens, at the time of his death, owned two of his works. Together with the Antwerp painter Osias Beert I and Clara Peeters, Van Es was one of the leading representatives of the “archaizing” trend in Flemish still life painting. He specialized in still lifes, almost exclusively breakfast and banquet pieces (banketjes), which grew out of the Antwerp still life tradition of the early 17th century, and flowers, some of his works, especially the early ones, clearly influenced by Osias Beert. His paintings subsequently evolved from purely “additive”, or “descriptive”, compositions to more unified, monochrome breakfast and banquet pieces, executed with forceful brushwork that captured a wide range of materials and textures. Today, the known oeuvre of Jacob van Es, spanning a career of a full half century, consists of just over a hundred still life paintings, suggesting that a considerable number of his works have been lost over the course of the centuries. Van Es usually signed his name in full and in capital letters, but only very rarely did he date his works, which makes it difficult to establish a chronological order.

External links