Our picturesque, bustling town view is an excellent example of the skilful  collaboration between our two Brussels painters in Paris circa 1675 – 1677. Bout painted the human figures and animals, Boudewijns the town.

 

These colourful, attractive Flemish scenes were and still are very popular, especially in Paris.

 

 

Flemish painter

Brussels (?) 1640/45 – 1719 Brussels

 

Landscape and cityscape painter. 

Well-known staffage painter: he painted figures in landscapes of colleagues, such as Ignatius van der Stock, but most frequently for his pupil, our Adriaen Frans Boudewijns and then later for his pupil Mathys Schoevaerdts; Bout also worked for two other Brussels landscape painters, Jacques d’Arthois and Lucas Achtschellinck.

 

Bout’s figures and animals were inspired by those of Jan Brueghel I. His kermesses and village markets echo the traditions of David Teniers the Younger.

 

In the past our painter was mistaken with a homonymous inhabitant of Brussels, who was born in 1658. Our painter got married in 1667. He joined the Brussels Painter’s Guild in 1671; his name was then written “Pierre-Josse Baudt”.

 

Our painting dates from 1676. Bout worked in Paris from circa 1675 until 1677. The Musée Carnavalet in Paris holds two views of Paris by Bout: of its arsenal and of the Saint-Louis Island. Bout developed here a successful collaboration with Adriaen Frans Boudewijns, which they continued after their return to Brussels. 

Bout also seemed to have worked in the Dutch Republic.

There is no proof of any visit to Italy, although he was influenced by the Italianate scenes of Nicolaes Berchem.

 

 

Flemish painter

Brussels 1644 – 1619 Brussels

 

Landscape and cityscape painter.

Pupil of Ignatius van der Stock and later in Paris possibly of Adam Frans van der Meulen.

He joined the Brussels’s Guild of Painters in 1665.

 

Boudewijns left Brussels for Paris in 1666, where he signed in December a three-years contract with the Flemish battle scene specialist Adam Frans van der Meulen (1632 – 1690), a pupil of Pieter Snayers. Van der Meulen had left his native Brussels already in 1664 for Paris, where he collaborated with Charles Lebrun. Van der Meulen and his collaborators, such as Boudewijns, painted tapestry cartoons for the Parisian Gobelins Manufactory. 

 

Later Boudewijns very regularly worked together with the staffage painter Pieter Bout, in Paris and afterwards in Brussels. 

 

Boudewijns was Dean of the Brussels Painter’s Guild in 1682.

 

He married three times: in 1664 in Brussels, in 1670 in Paris, with the sister of Adam Frans van der Meulen, and in Brussels in 1678.

 

Boudewijns almost never signed his paintings; ours is monogrammed. Many paintings are, rightly or wrongly, attributed to him.

 

 

Because it is a typical example of a perfectly executed, animated Flemish village view in the tradition of Jan Brueghel I and of David Teniers II.

 

Because it is an early example of the collaboration of Bout and Boudewijns: over time artists tend to repeat their successful recipes.

 

Later in their career both Bout and Boudewijns dropped their lively colours for more muted, Rococo tonalities (such as greenish-grey and brownish-red); in our painting you can enjoy the typical, lively Flemish Baroque colours.