Jan van Huysum

File:Jan van Huysum - portrait by Arnold Boonen.jpg, ca.1720]]

Jan was the son of the painter Justus van Huysum and his first wife Margrietje Schouten{{Cite journal |last=TAYLOR |first=PAUL |date=2008 |title=Review of De verleiding van Flora/The Temptations of Flora: Jan van Huysum 1682-1749 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42712213 |journal=Oud Holland |volume=121 |issue=4 |pages=256–262 |doi=10.1163/187501708788426675 |issn=0030-672X |jstor=42712213}}{{Cite book |last1=Segal |first1=Sam |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rmgCEAAAQBAJ&dq=justus+van+huysum+second+wife&pg=PA399 |title=Dutch and Flemish Flower Pieces (2 vols in case): Paintings, Drawings and Prints up to the Nineteenth Century |last2=Alen |first2=Klara |date=2020-09-25 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-42745-7 |pages=508 |language=en}} 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."{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Huysum, Jan van|volume=14|page=23}}

Van Huysum primarily lived and worked in the city of Amsterdam. Jan van Huysum and his wife Elisabeth Takens (1680–1751){{Cite web |title=Elisabeth Takens |url=https://www.vondel.humanities.uva.nl/ecartico/persons/9735 |access-date=2022-10-12 |website=www.vondel.humanities.uva.nl}}{{Cite web |last=Wheelock |first=Arthur K. |date=2014-04-24 |title=Artist Info: JAN VAN HUYSUM |url=https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1409.html |access-date=2022-10-12 |website=National Gallery of Art}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Mitchell |first=Peter |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10337171 |title=European flower painters |date=1981 |publisher=Interbook International B.V |isbn=90-6397-032-3 |location=Schiedam, Netherlands |pages=144–149 |oclc=10337171}}

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.{{Cite book |last=Woollett |first=Anne T. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/711050711 |title=Miraculous bouquets : flower and fruit paintings by Jan van Huysum |date=2011 |publisher=J. Paul Getty Museum |others=Jan van Huysum |isbn=978-1-60606-090-2 |location=Los Angeles |oclc=711050711}}

Jan Van Huysum "holds the highest place among painters of fruit and flowers."{{Cite book |last=Stanley |first=George |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n6YZAAAAYAAJ |title=A Classified Synopsis of the Principal Painters of the Dutch and Flemish Schools, Their Scholars, Imitators, and Analogists: Including an Account of Some of the Early German Masters, Connected with Those of Flanders and Holland |date=1855 |publisher=H.G. Bohn |pages=94–95 |language=en}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Taylor |first=Paul |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/31409546 |title=Dutch flower painting, 1600-1720 |date=1995 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=0-300-05390-8 |location=New Haven |pages=173, 191 |language=en |oclc=31409546}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Havard |first=Henry |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MxItAAAAYAAJ |title=The Dutch School of Painting |date=1885 |publisher=Cassell |pages=264–267 |language=en}} 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".

Van Huysum's work determined the "main trends in flower paintings for sixty to eighty years after his death."{{Cite book |last=Ember |first=Ildikó |url=http://archive.org/details/delightsforsense0000embe |title=Delights for the senses : Dutch and Flemish still-life paintings from Budapest |date=1989 |publisher=Budapest : Szépmüvészeti Múzeum/Museum of Fine Arts; Wausau, Wis. : Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum; Seattle : Distributed by the University of Washington Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-945529-01-9 |pages=32}}

Fruit and flower artists whose work is described as inspired by or analogous to that of Jan van Huysum: Jacob van Huysum (his brother), Justus van Huysum (his father), Pieter Faes, Wybrand Hendriks, Paul Theodore van Brussel, Jacobus Linthorst, Jan van Os, George Jacob Jan van Os (son of preceding), Gerard van Spaendonck, Cornelius van Spaendonck (brother of preceding), Coenraet Roepel, Johannes de Bosch, and John Flaxman.

One art historian called van Huysum’s landscapes (as opposed to his still lifes) "rather unfortunate."

Half of his pictures in public galleries are landscapes, views of imaginary lakes and harbours with impossible ruins and classic edifices, and woods of tall and motionless trees-the whole very glossy and smooth, and entirely lifeless. The earliest dated work of this kind is that of 1717, in the Louvre, a grove with maidens culling flowers near a tomb, ruins of a portico, and a distant palace on the shores of a lake bounded by mountains. According to one 19th century art historian, "His small [landscapes] are tenderly touched, and are sufficiently pleasing with their minuteness of detail, but those of a larger size are weak and ineffective."

Van Huysum’s paintings are in the collections of the Louvre in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Mauritshuis of The Hague, the National Gallery of London, The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, as well as in Berlin, Munich, Hanover, Dresden, Brunschwige, Vienna, Carlsruhe, Boston, Copenhagen, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and the Getty in the United States.

Circa 1911: Some of the finest of van Huysum's fruit and flower pieces were in English private collections: those of 1723 in the Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere's gallery; others of 1730–1732 in the collections of Henry Hope of Cavendish Square{{Cite web |title=Sotheby's Lot 116 |url=https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/old-master-paintings-n08760/lot.116.html}} (Hope & Co. banking money), and Francis Baring, 5th Baron Ashburton and/or Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook{{Cite web |title=Jan van Huijsum |url=https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/59654 |access-date=2022-10-12 |website=rkd.nl |language=en}} (both Barings Bank money).

File:Jan van Huysum (Dutch - Vase of Flowers - Google Art Project.jpg|Vase of Flowers, 1722

File:Terracotta Vase with Flowers and Fruits - Jan van Huijsum - Google Cultural Institute.jpg|Terracotta Vase with Flowers and Fruits

File:Jan van Huysum 001.jpg| Flowers and Fruits

File:Jan van Huysum 002.jpg| Flowers, Fruits and Insects

File:Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn2.jpg|"Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn", 1724

{{blockquote|The refinement of [Jan van Huysum]’s palette excels in its sophistication…Details, texture, defy description. Only an examination of the originals will suffice, as no process of reproduction can convey the subtleties of observation.|source=Peter Mitchell, European Flower Painters (1981)}}

{{main|Vase of Flowers (van Huysum)}}

The Vase of Flowers is a painting by van Huysum that was stolen from Italy by the retreating Wehrmacht in 1943.{{Cite web |date=2019-01-02 |title=Gallery demands back Nazi-stolen painting |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46734393 |access-date=2022-10-12 |website=BBC News |language=en-GB}} On 19 July 2019 German minister of foreign affairs Heiko Maas personally handed the picture to his Italian counterpart Enzo Moavero Milanesi in Florence and it was restored to the collection of the Uffizi.{{Cite news |last=Povoledo |first=Elisabetta |date=2019-07-19 |title=75 Years After World War II Theft, a Painting Returns to Italy |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/arts/italy-looted-painting.html |access-date=2022-10-12 |issn=0362-4331}}

{{reflist}}

• {{Cite book |last1=Segal |first1=Sam |last2= Ellens|first2=Mariël|last3=Dik|first3=Joris|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/123112146 |title=The temptations of Flora: Jan van Huysum, 1682-1749 |date=2007|publisher=Waanders |others=Jan van Huysum, Stedelijk Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts|isbn=978-90-400-8384-6 |location=Zwolle, Netherlands|oclc=123112146}}
• {{Cite book |last=Taylor |first=Paul |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/31409546 |title=Dutch flower painting, 1600-1720 |date=1995 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=0-300-05390-8 |location=New Haven |oclc=31409546}}
• Grant, Maurice Harold, Jan Van Huysum, 1682–1749, including a catalogue raisonné (1954)

{{Commons category|Jan van Huijsum}}

• {{cite web

|title=Jan van Huysum

|publisher=National Gallery of Art

|url=http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/psearch?Request=A&Person=15450

|archive-url=https://archive.today/20121213195859/http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/psearch?Request=A&Person=15450

|url-status=dead

|archive-date=2012-12-13

|access-date=2008-01-22

}} Includes biography and two pictures.

• {{cite web

| title = Jan van Huysum (1682 - 1749)

| publisher = Wallace Collection

| url = http://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org:8080/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=artist&objectId=4401&viewType=detailView

| access-date = 2008-01-22

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110728165717/http://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org:8080/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=artist&objectId=4401&viewType=detailView

| archive-date = 2011-07-28

| url-status = dead

}} Includes brief biography and one picture.

• {{cite web

| title = Jan van Huysum

| publisher = ArtCyclopedia

| url = http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/huysum_jan_van.html

| access-date = 2008-01-22

}} Links to entries in numerous online museums and public art galleries.

• [http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/59153/rec/1 Dutch and Flemish paintings from the Hermitage], an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Huysum (cat. no. 14)

{{Authority control (arts)}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Huysum, Jan Van}}

Category:1682 births

Category:1749 deaths

Category:18th-century Dutch painters

Category:18th-century Dutch male artists

Category:Dutch male painters

Category:Dutch landscape painters

Category:Dutch still life painters

Category:Dutch flower artists

Category:Painters from Amsterdam

Category:Huysum family of painters