Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert (Bergen-op-Zoom 1613/14 - Antwerp 1654)

The successful figure painter Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert was born in Bergen-op-Zoom in North-Brabant between 27 November 1613 and 22/23 January 1614, the son of Pieter Willeboirts Bosschaert and Cornelia Thomas or Thomassen.²²A. Heinrich, ‘Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert, Bergen op Zoom 1613/14-Anvers 1654’, in P. Ramade et al., Meesters van het zuiden: Barokschilders rondom Rubens/Peintres baroques des Pays-Bas du sud, exh. cat. Valenciennes (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes)/’s-Hertogenbosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 2000, pp. 101-21, esp. p. 101, and A. Heinrich, Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert (1613/14-1654): Ein Flämische Nachfolger Van Dycks, 2 vols., Turnhout 2003, I, p. 15. His parents were both Catholic and influential; his father had been appointed by Maurits (1567-1625), Prince of Orange and Count Nassau, as receiver of taxes and administrator of the Orange family’s long-standing holdings in the city.

In 1628/29, Willeboirts Bosschaert was enrolled at the (not early) age of fifteen or sixteen as an apprentice in the Antwerp studio of Gerard Seghers (1591-1651), and did not become a master in the guild until 1636/37, some years after he had reached his majority. In 1637 he acquired bourgeois rights in the city and became a member of the prestigious Kolveniersgilde, for which he was to provide a ‘chimney piece’ (destroyed in 1739) for its new meeting room. Another mark of recognition in the same year was his selection by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) as one of his collaborators in the series to decorate King Philip IV’s hunting lodge, the Torre de la Parada, outside Madrid.

Willeboirts Bosschaert’s career assumed an international dimension when in the autumn of 1641 he was summoned to meet the Stadholder, Prince Frederik Hendrik, in Bergen-op-Zoom, where his work must have been already available to view. From then until the prince’s death in 1647, Frederik Hendrik was his chief patron, requiring from the artist journeys to The Hague and advice on purchases, and commissioning some thirty paintings.

After 1647 Willeboirts Bosschaert’s ties with The Hague slackened, though he was sought out as a substitute for Gaspar de Crayer (1584-1669) to execute two paintings for the Oranjesaal in the Huis ten Bosch. In the Spanish Netherlands his work was collected by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor general from 1647; and the governador de las armas in the army of Flanders, the count of Fuensaldaña (1603-1661), commissioned three altarpieces for the church of the Franciscan monastery he had founded at Fuensaldaña near Valladolid, of which the Assumption of the Virgin, completed just before his death, is the largest in his extant oeuvre, measuring 6.35 by 4.6 m.

By 1640/41 Willeboirts Bosschaert’s studio was sufficiently capacious for him to take on three apprentices; another followed in 1643/44 and two more in 1652/53. He also long employed a collaborator, Johan van Erlewijn, who was part of his household. Already described in the caption beneath his self-portrait (engraved by Coenrad Waumans (1619-after 1675) and published in 1649) as ‘a very famous painter’ (Peinctre tres renommé).³³In J. Meyssens, Image de divers hommes desprit sublime qui par leur art et science devraient vivre éternellement et desquels la louange et renommée faict estonner le monde, Antwerp 1649 and C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermartste schilders, architecte, beldtowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuwe, Antwerp s.a. (1662), p. 167. Willeboirts was appointed dean of the painters’ guild in 1650/51. The identity of two of the houses he rented is known: one on the Meir which he took from 1644 and the other, Den Bock in the Florisstraat, the last house to have been owned by the wealthy Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625), into which he moved in 1652.

Willeboirts Bosschaert specialized in religious and mythological scenes and was also an accomplished portraitist. He was associated with such leading Antwerp artists as Jan Davidsz de Heem (1605-1684), David Ryckaert III (1612-1661) and Gonzales Coques (1614 or 1618-1684). Among those he collaborated with are Daniel Seghers (1540-1661), Adriaen van Utrecht (1599-1652), Jan Fyt (1611-1661), Paul de Vos (1595-1678), Frans Ykens (1601-1692/93) and Jan van den Hoecke (1611-1651). The catalogue raisonné of his oeuvre assembled by Heinrich consists in over 78 figure compositions and 21 portraits with over 150 references to lost works.

The artist’s surname, as used in Bergen-op-Zoom, was the double-barrelled Willeboirts Bosschaert. But Thomas’s sister signed herself simply Bosschaert, whereas, in Antwerp, he himself preferred Willeboirts.⁴⁴As, for instance, in the records of the Antwerp painters’ guild, although the full name was given to refer to him as dean, P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76, II, p. 213. The double-barrelled form is used here.

REFERENCES
A. Heinrich, Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert (1613/14-1654): Ein Flämische Nachfolger Van Dycks, 2 vols., Turnhout 2003, I (biography and catalogue raisonné), II (documentation); J.A. Worp, De Briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens (1608-1687), Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien vols. 15, 19, 21, 24, 28, 32, The Hague 1911-17, III, nos. 2883, 2894, 2916, 2975, 3134; IV, nos. 3782, 4304, 4784, 4827, 4908; V, nos. 4969, 4974, 4976, 5014, 5033 (for Bosschaert’s correspondence with the Stadholder in The Hague)