Abraham Genoels (Antwerp 1640 - Antwerp 1723)

The artist Abraham Genoels is today chiefly known by his drawings and prints, for although both a member of the Académie royale in Paris and the Antwerp guild of St Luke his extant painted oeuvre is exiguous (See under [SK-A-1839](/en/collection/ SK-A-1839/catalogue-entry)). A good deal is known about the first half of his career when he was active in these two cities and later in Rome, but little about the second spent again in Antwerp. Baptized in the Antwerp Sint-Jacobskerk on 25 May 1640, Genoels died on 10 May 1723 and was buried in the Sint-Pauluskerk.²²Published in T. van Lerius, Catalogue du Musée d’Anvers, Antwerp 1874, pp. 179, 181; 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. 414-15. His training was never officially registered; by his own account (at second hand, see below) he was taught by two obscure artists Jacob Backereel and Niclaes Fierlants both active in Antwerp.³³P.T.A. Swillens (ed.), De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen door Arnold Houbraken, 3 vols., Maastricht 1943-53, III, p. 75. First recorded at work in Paris, which he reached via Amsterdam when aged nineteen, he is there described as a landscapist, collaborating with Charles Le Brun (1619-1690)⁴⁴P.T.A. Swillens (ed.), De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen door Arnold Houbraken, 3 vols., Maastricht 1943-53, III, p. 77. and his countryman Adam Frans van der Meulen (1631/1632-1690)⁵⁵D. Bodart, Les peintres des Pays-Bas méridionaux et de la principauté de Liège à Rome au XVIIème siècle, 2 vols., Brussels/Rome 1970, I, pp. 318-19, 320-21. while operating as a ‘peintre cartonnier’ (cartoon painter) in the Gobelin factory. Received into the Académie royale on 4 January 1665, his reception piece was described as ‘Un lac, & au le devant deux jeunes garçons…’ (A lake and in the foreground two young boys…).⁶⁶Les peintres du Roi 1648-1743, exh. cat. Tours (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours)/Toulouse (Musée des Augustins) 2000, p. 328, no. R.52. In the early 1670s he was in Antwerp and joined the guild of St Luke in the accounting year 1672/73.⁷⁷P. 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, p. 414. In 1674 he travelled to Rome, and was received into the Schildersbent with the name Archimedes,⁸⁸P.T.A. Swillens (ed.), De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen door Arnold Houbraken, 3 vols., Maastricht 1943-53, III, p. 79; G.J. Hoogewerff, De Bentvueghels, The Hague 1952, pp. 115-17, 136. For the artist’s lodgings in Rome, see G.J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600-1725). Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague 1942, pp. 152, 155, 260, 263. which nickname he was long to append to his signature on both his engravings and his drawings. He returned to Antwerp via Paris in 1682. Nothing remains of his work for distinguished clients in Paris, Antwerp and Rome, whose names, along with detailed accounts of the first two decades or so of his career, he had probably communicated to, and were then recounted by, Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) in his Groote Schouburgh.⁹⁹P.T.A. Swillens (ed.), De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen door Arnold Houbraken, 3 vols., Maastricht 1943-53, III, pp. 76-78, 81. Houbraken in his account concerning Genoels seems at least partially to have relied on a letter from Genoels of 1716, see Ibid., pp. 79, 160.

REFERENCES
De Wallens in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich/Leipzig 1983-, LI, pp. 351-53