Jacques d' Arthois

Variant namesauktoriserad namnform: Jacques d' Arthois

DatesBiographical dates: 1613 - 1686 Dead: dead 1686 Born: born 1613

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BiographyBiography: landscape painter, draughtsman and designer of tapestry cartoons. In 1625 Jacques d’Arthois was apprenticed to the otherwise unknown painter Jan Mertens (active from 1599). He became a master in the Brussels Guild of St. Luke in 1634. In 1655 he succeeded the landscape specialist Lodewijk de Vadder as designer of cartoons cum privilegium for the Brussels tapestry manufacture. Between 1639 and 1654 D’Arthois trained his brothers Hubert and Nicolaes, and his son Jean Baptiste, as well as another six apprentices. It is also assumed that Cornelis Huysmans received at least part of his artistic training in D’Arthois’ Brussels studio. D’Arthois was the leading painter of the Brussels school of decorative landscape painting in the second half of the 17th century. Most of his picturesque woodland scenes – dominated by tall trees with luxuriant foliage – were set in the Forest of Soignes, a large forest to the south and east of Brussels, where in 1655, at the height of his career, he purchased a house. D’Arthois was proficient in both small and large formats, producing cabinet-sized pictures as well as large decorative paintings. He received numerous commissions from churches and convents, including one for several paintings in the transept of the Cathedral of Sts. Michael and Gudule at Brussels. D’Arthois also supplied cartoons for the tapestry weavers of Brussels, Mechelen and Oudenaarde. His earliest works were influenced by the densely wooded landscapes of Denys van Alsloot, while subsequent paintings exhibit the graceful fluidity of De Vadder’s more open landscape compositions. Unlike earlier Flemish landscapists, such as Van Alsloot and Gillis van Coninxloo II, D’Arthois specialized in views of the edge of the forest rather than the interior. A few of his paintings are dated, the earliest in 1640 (Bruges, Groeningemuseum); a series of thirteen engravings by Wenzel Hollar after D’Arthois’ landscapes, dated 1648–1652 (Holl. IX, p. 70), provide a framework for his early chronology. By the mid- 1650s his work shows the influence of Peter Paul Rubens’ grand landscape designs: they are more broadly painted and more expansive, yet retain a calm, static quality linked to 16th-century traditions. Strong colour contrasts in D’Arthois’ paintings are developed essentially within a framework of the traditional tripartite (brown-green-blue) colour scheme of Netherlandish landscape painting. D’Arthois frequently enlisted the aid of figure painters, who contributed the staffage to his landscapes. His collaboration with, among others, David Teniers II, Adam Frans van der Meulen, Pieter Snayers and Gaspar de Crayer, is documented.

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