Jan Van Huysum was born at Amsterdam in 1682

Jan Van Huysum was born at Amsterdam in 1682. His father, Justus Van Huysum, who dealt in pictures, was himself a middling painter in most kinds of painting. He taught his son to paint screens, figures and vases on wood, landscape, and sometimes flowers; but the son being arrived at a reasoning age perceived that to work in every branch of his art was the way to excel in none, therefore he confined himself to flowers, fruit, and landscape, and quitting his father's school set up for himself. oil paintings for sale

No one before Van Huysum attained so perfect a manner of representing the beauty of flowers and the down and bloom of fruit; for he painted with greater freedom than Velvet Breughel and Mignon, with more tenderness and nature than Mario di Fiori, Andrea Belvedere, Michel de Campidoglio or Daniel Seghers; with more mellowness than de Heem, and with more vigour of colouring than Baptist Monoyer. art oil paintings online

His pictures of flowers and fruit pleasing an English gentleman, he introduced them into his own country, where they came into vogue and yielded a high price. To express the motions of the smallest insects with justice he used to contemplate them through the microscope with great attention. At the times of the year when the flowers were in bloom, and the fruit in perfection, he used to design them in his own garden, and the Sieur Gulet and Voorhelm sent him the most beautiful productions in those kinds they could pick up. abstract oil painting on canvas

His reputation rose to such a height that all the curious in painting sought his works with great eagerness, which encouraged him to raise his prices so high that his pictures at last grew out of the reach of any but princes and men of the greatest fortune. He was the first flower painter that ever thought of laying them on light grounds, which requires much greater art than to paint them on dark ones. reproduction oil paintings uk

Van Huysum died at Amsterdam in 1749. He never had any pupil but a young woman named Haverman, and his brother Michael. Two other brothers have distinguished themselves in painting, one named Justus, who painted battles, and died at twenty-two years old, the other named James, who ended his days in England in 1740. He copied the pictures of his brother John so well as to deceive the connoisseurs: he had usually £20 for each copy. For the originals, it may be noted, from a thousand to fourteen hundred florins was paid. landscape oil painting on canvas