Jan Boeckhorst

Name
Jan Boeckhorst
Date of birth
1604
Date of death
1668
Place of death
Antwerp/Belgium
Biography
Born in Műnster, Germany, Jan Boeckhorst or Johann Bockhorst (c. 1604 – 21 April 1668) was a Flemish Baroque painter and draftsman, who received a Jesuit education and moved to Antwerp in the 1620s, to study with Peter Paul Rubens. He may have also studied with Jacob Jordaens when Rubens went to London in the late 1620s, and also worked with Anthony Van Dyck. He became a master in the Saint Luke's Guild in Antwerp in 1633/1634. He travelled twice to Italy in the 1630s where he studied the Venetian masters Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. Proficient in the stylistic mode of Belgium’s leading painters, Boeckhorst, who was known as ‘tall John’ or Lange Jan, produced altarpieces for churches in the Southern Netherlands and his native Műnster. He also designed many cartoons for tapestries. Unusually versatile, he produced history paintings on religious and mythological subjects, allegorical works, genre scenes and portraits and collaborated with the landscape painter Jan Brueghel the Younger and animal painter Frans Snyders, by contributing figure paintings. Snyders in turn added still-life elements to some of Boeckhorst’s works. Other prominent artists with who he worked include Gerard Seghers and Jan Wildens.