Flemish painter

Documented in Antwerp from 1683 until 1742

 

Rare genre scene painter.

Pupil in Antwerp of Godfried Maes II (Antwerp 1649 – 1700 Antwerp), who was a draughtsman and painter of history scenes.

 

Eldest son of the further unknown painter Lucas Smout I, brother of the landscape painter Lucas II.

Lucas I had been a pupil of Artus Wolffort. He also ran a business in painting materials.

 

Our Dominicus was inscribed as an apprentice of Godfried Maes II in the Painter’s Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in the year 1683/84. That year Maes was the Dean of that Guild. 

Smouts was inscribed as a Master in the year 1700/1701.

 

 

Smouts seems to have regularly painted our subject of a rich miser. He also painted rich interior scenes and detailed representations of artist’s workshops.

Stylistically Smouts stands close to Gerard Thomas and to Balthasar van den Bossche; some of his unsigned works must go hidden under erroneous attributions to these contemporary Antwerp painters. Typical of all three of these Late Baroque painters is the abundant, excessive use of objects and ornaments filling their spaces. Regularly they included an insolate, funny details: here the unexpected visit of Death.

Gerard Thomas (Antwerp 1663 – 1720/21 Antwerp) had also been a pupil of Godfried Maes, three years before Smouts. Balthasar van den Bossche (1681 – 1715) was a pupil of Thomas; he died at the young age of 34.

 

 

Because it is an interesting conversation piece.