Jan van Huysum is probably the most prominent
of all Dutch flower painters. He was born in 1682 in Amsterdam, the eldest
son of Justus van Huysum the Elden. Jan and his youngest brothers, Justus
the Younger, Jacob and Michiel van Huysum, all followed in their father's
footsteps and became flower painters. Jan, however, was far more
successful than his brothers. During his lifetime he acquired enormous
fame, selling his pictures for astronomically high prices to courts all
over Europe. People were prepared to pay several thousand guilders for one
of Van Huysum's still-life pieces. Among his customers were Louis XIV,
Charles of Austria, the English Prime Minister and the Duke of
Mecklenburgh. Van Huysum came to be known as the 'Phoenix of Flower
Painters'.
Van Huysum's early work
dovetails seamlessly with the seventeenth-century tradition of
Jan Davidsz de Heem
and Mignon.
Typical for his work in the suggestion of three-dimensional depth. Van
Huysum set off his compositions against a dark background.
His later paintings, after
1720, are quite different and reveal a more exuberant style, marked by
asymmetrical compositions against a much lighter background. Convincing
suggestion of three-dimension relations was no longer Van Huysum's prime
interest. Instead, he gave his paintings a certain exuberance and
abundance by using light, pastel-like colours, striving for a primarily
decorative effects.
Van Huysum was secretive
about his painting technique because he feared that someone might imitate
his methods. These were supposedly different from those practised by early
Dutch still-life painters. Now we know that his materials were not much
different from those of his colleagues. He was one of the first in the
Netherlands to use newly introduced some new pigments. But the real
difference was in the change from a dark background to a lighter one. His
transparent or translucent paints had a luminosity, that could not be
obtained in any other way.
