Gerard Thomas was an important Late Baroque Flemish painter of interior scenes, especially of artist’s workshops and doctor’s cabinets. Typical of Thomas is his excessive use of objects and ornaments filling his spaces, which he luckily restrained himself from doing so here, in this visually attractive and comprehensive composition.

 

 

Flemish painter

Antwerp 1663 – 1720/21 Antwerp

 

Painter of genre scenes.

 

Son of the painter Peter Thomas Vieracker, who passed away in 1676.

 

In the year 1680/81 he became a pupil of Godfried Maes (1649 – 1700), a painter of religious, allegorical and historical scenes, who became dean of the Painter’s Guild of Antwerp in 1682.

Thomas joined the Guild as a Master in 1688/89. Between 1695 and 1707 he instructed several pupils, best-known is his follower Balthasar van den Bossche (1681 – 1715). Thomas was twice dean of the Antwerp Painter’s Guild: in 1695 and again in 1707.

 

Thomas’ technique and skill are still in line with earlier, 17th century painting, although he belongs stylistically to the Late Baroque. 

 

Both Gerard Thomas and Balthasar van den Bossche are typical exponents of Late Baroque painting in Antwerp: their highly detailed, elegant representations of studio interiors of artists, cabinets of doctors, pharmacists, alchemists, dentists and lawyers and of galleries of collectors must have been extremely fashionable in those days. Their anecdotical, theatrical scenography, order in the disorder, of an abundant number of objects and details is striking, the picturesque use of insolate details funny. 

 

Apparently the collectors of those days were very keen on showing of, not only with their collection and with the connoisseurship it implied, but also with their knowledge of the artists and with their creative process. Therefore they possessed their self-portraits and interior views of their workshops. This also explains the growing demand for artists’ biographies. In this process the artist upgraded himself from an artisan to ‘an artist’, aspiring the same intellectual and social level as his noble patrons. This explains the rich interior of his studio, with all the well chosen props, classical statues, globes, curtains, etc. Some of these regularly appear in Thomas’ paintings,as if they were part of his own collection.

 

 

 

 

Because it is such a very well balanced composition, which is rare for Gerard Thomas, who usually over-decorated his interiors, clearly suffering of horror vacui.