Pieter Bout (active Brussels from 1670/71 - died Over-Heembeek, Brussels, 1689)

Landscape and painter of figures on a small scale, Pieter Bout’s date and place of birth are not known. A dearth of biographical information was early noted.¹¹J. Campo Weyerman, De levens-beschrijvingen der nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over de schilder-konst der ouden: Verrijkt met de konterfeytsels der voornamate konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen in koper gesneden door J. Houbraken, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, III, p. 345. The date of birth is given as 1640/45 by the RKD. His earliest, extant dated painting is of 1674²²A Carnival on the Ice in an anonymous sale, Brussels (Fievez), 18/19 February 1936 (photograph in the Witt Library). but he may have been taught and/or been active in Rotterdam, before his marriage in 1667 in Brussels to Joanna Garnevelt. In 1670/71 he was registered as a master in the Brussels guild of St Luke, and in the same year he is recorded as living in his wife’s stepmother’s house in Over-Heembeek. Bout may have been active in Paris,³³This has been doubted by Nica (J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, p. 11). where his portrait was engraved as of ‘van Bouc’ by Gerard Edelinck (d. 1707);⁴⁴A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, 3 vols., Leipzig/Vienna 1906-11, I, p. 479. but as the sitter is not in contemporary costume, the identification is not certain. There Bout may have worked for Adam Frans van der Meulen (1631/32-1690); a copy by him was recorded in the latter’s estate, the prototype having been of 1668 or 1674.⁵⁵I. Richefort, Adam-François van der Meulen (1632-1690): Peintre flamand au service de Louis XIV, Rennes 2004, p. 183, note 2, p. 267. Bout has long been considered to have executed the staffage in landscapes by, among others, Adrien-François Boudewyns (1644-1719);⁶⁶J. Campo Weyerman, De levens-beschrijvingen der nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, met een uytbreyding over de schilder-konst der ouden: Verrijkt met de konterfeytsels der voornamate konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen in koper gesneden door J. Houbraken, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, III, p. 345; for other artists with whom it has been thought that he collaborated – I. Van der Stock, A.F. Dupont, L. Achtschellink, J. d’Arthois – see Römer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, XIII, p. 399. there are apparently no extant works signed by both artists to substantiate this, but a painting attributed to them was already listed in a shipment of 1710 from Ghent to Paris.⁷⁷E. Duverger, Documents concernant le commerce d’art de Francisco-Jacomo van den Berghe et Gillis van der Vennen de Gand avec la Hollande et la France pendant les premières decades de XVIIIe siècle, s.l. 2004, p. 95. Boudewyns is said to have left Paris for Brussels in 1674, having been active in the French capital for some fifteen years.⁸⁸K. Ertz, A. Wied, K. Schütz et al., Die flämische Landschaft, 1520-1700, exh. cat. Essen (Kulturstiftung Ruhr Essen, Villa Hugel)/Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien) 2003-04, p. 379. Bout was the beneficiary of a codicil to a will made in Antwerp, 19 March 1684, in which he was described as ‘de schilder Bout tot Brussels’.⁹⁹E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, XI, p. 261. His last dated extant painting is apparently of 1686.¹⁰¹⁰Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (T. van Lerius, Catalogue du Musée d’Anvers, Antwerp 1874, no. 27). He was buried in the Sint-Nicolaaskerk in Over-Heembeek on 19 June 1689.¹¹¹¹J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, p. 14. Pinchart’s archival discoveries concerning a birth in 1658, a marriage in 1695 and a birth of a daughter in 1702 (in 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 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, pp. 68-69) must refer to another Pieter Bout. His date of death has previously been given as 28 January or 2 February 1719 by Römer (in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, XIII, p. 399); Sellink in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., Basingstoke 1996, IV, p. 589; Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe Siecle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 12.

REFERENCES
J. Nica, Bijdrage tot de studie van het werk van Pieter Bout ( -1689), 3 vols., Brussels 1994 (diss. Vrije Universiteit), I, pp. 11-23