Flemish painter

Leuven or Mechelen circa 1535/36 – 1597 Frankfurt

 

Important late Mannerist landscape painter (follower of the ten years older Pieter Brueghel I); also painter of market scenes and of portraits.

 

Younger brother of the landscape painter Maerten van Valckenborch (1534 – 1612).

Maerten’s two sons, the landscape painter Frederik (circa 1565/66 – 1623) and the painter of large-scale biblical and mythological compositions with many figures Gillis I (1570 – 1622) were also important painters. Their sister, Helena Heilwich, married with the perspective painter Hendrick van Steenwijck II.

 

Lucas the Elder studied landscape painting and started his career in Mechelen. He settled in Antwerp, which he left amidst the religious Protestant uproar. He travelled to Liège in 1657. He lived with his brother Maerten from 1570 until 1573 in Aachen, came back to Antwerp from 1575 until 1577 and lived for a short while in Brussels (1577/78). In 1579 he became the court painter to Archduke Matthias, the Governor of the Spaish Netherland in Brussels. The Archuke lost that position in 1582 and Lucas seems to have followed him to Upper Austria, to Linz

where he is documented  from 1585 until 1593. In 1593 he finally moved to Frankfurt, where he joined the successful workshop of his brother, Maerten, remaining here until his death in 1597.

 

Master of the still life painter Georg Flegel and of the landscape painter Peter Stevens II.

 

Maerten, Lucas I and Frederik van Valckenborch painted landscapes in a mixture of fantasy and of accurate topographical elements.