About Mathys Schoevaerdts

Flemish painter
Brussels circa 1665 – after 1702 Brussels

Landscape painter.

Pupil of the landscape painter Adriaen Frans Boudewijns  (Brussels 1644 – 1711 Brussels) in 1682.
Schoevaerdts entered the Painters’ Guild of Saint Luke in Brussels in 1690; he was dean from 1692 until 1696.
His last dated painting is from 1702. It is supposed that he might have died soon thereafter. There is a document from 1712 that states that by then he was dead.

In his early works he was inspired by the market views and other picturesque crowded scenes in delicate light blues and greens of Jan Brueghel I.
Later in his career he underwent the influence of Italianate painters. 

His unsigned paintings can be mistaken for those of Adriaen Frans Boudewijns and Pieter Bouts. 

Schoevaerdts often included imaginative ruins or buildings in his landscapes, often decorated with foliage to emphasise their dilapidated state. 

It would seem Schoevaerdts kept drawings of his figures and architecture to be re-used in different combinations in his landscapes.
The medieval character of the architecture, the small scale of the figures and the variety of their activities are very much in 17^th century Flemish tradition.

His river landscapes and the sunny open vista are reminiscent of both the Flemish and Dutch Italianate painters, the so-called Bamboccianti.