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Jan Baptist Weenix

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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JAN BAPTIST WEENIX (1621-1660), Dutch painter, the son of an architect, was born in Amsterdam, and studied first under Jan Micker, then at Utrecht under A. Bloemaert, and at Amsterdam under Moijaert, and finally, between 1643 and 1647, in Rome. In that city he acquired a great name and worked for Pope Innocent and Cardinal Pamphili. He returned to his native country in 1649, in which year he became master of the gild of St Luke at Utrecht, where he died in 1660. He was a very productive and versatile painter, his favourite subjects being landscapes with ruins and large figures, seaports, and, later in life, large still-life pictures of dead game. Now and then he attempted religious genre, one of the rare pieces of this kind being the "Jacob and Esau" at the Dresden Gallery. At the National Gallery, London, is a "Hunt - ing Scene" by the master, and the Glasgow Gallery has a char - acteristic painting of ruins. Weenix is represented at most of the important continental galleries, notably at Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, and St Petersburg. His chief pupils were his son Jan, Berchem, and Hondecoeter.

His son, JAN Weenix (1640-1719), was born at Amsterdam and was a member of the Utrecht gild of painters in 1664 and 1668. Like his father he devoted himself to a variety of sub - jects, but his fame is chiefly due to his paintings of dead game and of hunting scenes. Indeed, many of the pictures of this genre, which were formerly ascribed to the elder Weenix, are now generally considered to be the works of his son, who even at the early age of twenty rivalled, and subsequently surpassed, his father in breadth of handling and richness of colour. At Amsterdam he was frequently employed .to decorate private houses with wall-paintings on canvas; and between 1702 and 1712 he was occupied with an important series of large hunting pictures for the Prince Palatine Johann Wilhelm's castle of Bensberg, near Cologne. Some of these pictures are now at Munich Gallery. He died at Amsterdam in 1719. Many of his best works are to be found in English private collections, though the National Gallery has but a single example, a painting of dead game and a dog. Jan Weenix is well represented at the galleries of Amsterdam, The Hague, Haarlem, Rotterdam, Berlin, and Paris.