Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen (I) (London, 1593 – Utrecht, 1661)

Cornelis Janson [Janssens] van Ceulen – who signed his works as Jonson van Ceulen – was born into an Antwerp family that originally came from Cologne. He was baptized in the Dutch church in London on 14 October 1593.¹¹A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), p. 261. It has been suggested that he was trained in the Netherlands but was back in London at the beginning of 1619.²²K. Hearn, ‘“Neat Finishing, Smooth Painting and Labour in Drapery”: The Distinctive Portrait Style of Cornelis Jonson (1593-1661)', CODART eZine 7, Winter 2015 (online at https://www.codart.nl/feature/curators-project/neat-finishing-smooth-painting-and-labour-in-drapery-the-distinctive-portrait-style-of-cornelis-jonson-1593-1661/). Janssens van Ceulen married Elisabeth Beck or Beke (?-?) from Colchester, Essex, on 16 July 1622, with whom he lived in Blackfriars. On 5 December 1632, he was appointed ‘his Majesty’s servant in the quality of picture maker’ to King Charles I (reg. 1625-49). In 1643, he and his family fled the Civil War and settled in Middelburg, where he entered the Guild of St Luke. In 1646 he is documented as living in Amsterdam. Six years later he was in Utrecht, where he and his wife made their will on 7 November 1652. He died in Utrecht and was buried on 5 August 1661.³³J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw, 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, p. 343.

At the beginning of Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen’s career, much of his output consisted of bust-length painted portraits. In the Netherlands, he painted elegant half- or three-quarter-length figures that reveal the influence of Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). There are also some group portraits, such as the Middelburg archers’ guild of 1650, preserved in the city’s Town Hall. His son, Cornelis Janson [Janssens] van Ceulen (II) (1635-1715), was his pupil and a close follower.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2007

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet vande edele vry schilder-const, Antwerp 1661, pp. 298-99; J. von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Ku¨nste von 1675: Leben der beru¨hmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister (ed. A.R. Peltzer), Munich 1925 (orig. edn. 1675), p. 194; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, II (1719), pp. 224-25; H. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England […], 3 vols., London 1862 (rev. edn.), I, pp. 211-15; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I (1906), pp. 261-263, III (1911), p. 51 (as Ceulen, Cornelis Janssens); U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XIX (1926), pp. 143-44 (text by H. Schneider); M. Edmond, ‘Limners and Picturemakers: New Light on the Lives of Miniaturists and Large-scale Portrait Painters Working in London in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, The Walpole Society 47 (1978-80), pp. 84-89; J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XVII, pp. 644-46 (text by R.E.O. Ekkart); S. Kollmann, Niederländische Kunst und Künstler im London des 17. Jahrhunderts, Hildesheim and elsewhere 2000 (Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 135), pp. 219-220 (as Johnson van Keulen, Cornelis); K. Hearn, ‘The English Career of Cornelius Johnson’, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 13 (2003), pp. 113-28; RKD artists https://rkd.nl/artists/41951