Jan van Huysum

Jan van Huysum (or Jan van Huijsum) is the most notable member of the Van Huysum family of artists working in Dutch Golden Age of the 17th and 18th centuries; "by common consent, Jan van Huysum has been held to be the best painter of flowers." Trained in decoration from a young age, he "gradually developed an execution of details of the utmost beauty and finish" creating "wonderful flower pieces whereon drops of water and crawling ants could be seen without a magnifying glass."

Life and work
Jan was the son of the painter Justus van Huysum and his first wife Margrietje Schouten and the older brother of Jacob van Huysum and Justus van Huysum the Younger. Jan's much younger half-brother Michiel van Huysum was also a flower painter. His grandfather Jan van Huysum the Elder is said to have been "expeditious in decorating doorways, screens and vases."

Van Huysum primarily lived and worked in the city of Amsterdam. Jan van Huysum and his wife Elisabeth Takens (1680-1751) had 12 children together but only three outlived their parents. Jan van Huysum's daughter, Francina Margaretha van Huysum, was also a flower painter and may have assisted her father in his work. Margareta Haverman was his student until she moved to Paris.

Van Huysum was somewhat secretive about his process and worked separately from the rest of his family. One of the few sources of biography for Van Huysum is art dealer Christiaan Josi. Another is his contemporary Johan von Gool.

Jan Van Huysum "holds the highest place among painters of fruit and flowers." His flower-arrangement still lifes, in a style of the period collectively called vanitas and/or Pronkstilleven, are said to possess "an unerring elegance of composition, which enabled him to avoid the imbalance, the overcomposition, that others risked." His flower pictures produced after 1720 "on light or yellow grounds are superior to his earlier works, which are on dark ones." He often painted on oak and copper panels rather than canvas. Van Huysum would initially paint his leaves in blue and then apply a brown or green overwash; this technique was pioneered by Otto Marseus van Schrieck. He painted from "life," meaning fresh-cut flowers, assembling them over time into visual bouquets; sometimes this meant pieces took a year or more as he waited for certain blossoms to come back in season, such as a yellow rose he wanted for 1742 picture.

He was successful in his own time, with his pictures sought "by princes and crowned heads-his work sometimes sold for four to five times as much as work by Rembrandt van Rijn-and "time has increased, rather than diminished" the value of his paintings. Buyers of note during van Huysum's lifetime included Prince William of Hesse, and Sir Robert Walpole, a British Prime Minister.

His contemporary rival was Rachel Ruysch. The earlier Dutch artist Jan David de Heem anticipated van Huysum; "if de Heem, by the harmony of his warm golden color, be called the Titian of flowers and fruits, Jan van Huysum's bright and sunny treatment entitles him to the name of the Corregio of the same branch of art".

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2025