FOUQUIER, Jacques - b. 1590 Antwerpen, d. 1659 Paris - WGA

FOUQUIER, Jacques

(b. 1590 Antwerpen, d. 1659 Paris)

Flemish painter and draughtsman, active in France. His first surviving painting is the Winter Landscape (1617; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum), a work in the manner of Jan Breughel the Elder, who may have been his master. However, a drawing of a River Scene (Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen), containing references to such Dutch landscape masters as Willem Buytewech and Esaias van de Velde, suggests that he may have trained in Holland. In 1614 he became a master in the artists’ guild in Antwerp and in 1616 in that of Brussels. Soon afterwards he was in Heidelberg, working for Frederick V, the Elector Palatine.

The artist settled in Paris in 1621 when Rubens was painting the Luxembourg Gallery for Marie de Médicis, and is famous for the decorative programme that Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu commissioned him to paint, including views of French cities to be placed between the windows of the recently completed Grande Galerie of the Louvre.

Hortus Palatinus and Heidelberg Castle
Hortus Palatinus and Heidelberg Castle by

Hortus Palatinus and Heidelberg Castle

The Hortus Palatinus next to Heidelberg set the tone for the development of the Baroque garden in Germany. The Prince Elector Frederick V of the Palatinate hired the fFrench architect Salomon de Caus for this project. hardly anything now remains of the garden itself, but engravings by the architect and the painting by Fouquier give some impression of the size and the layout of the beds.

Winter Landscape
Winter Landscape by

Winter Landscape

This painting with its bird’s-eye perspective and colourful population of doll-like little figures, is a Flemish counterpart to similar paintings by the Dutch Hendrick Avercamp.

Wooded Landscape with a Stream
Wooded Landscape with a Stream by

Wooded Landscape with a Stream

In this striking landscape, the artist used the technique of paint diluted in water, tempera, previously adopted by miniaturists up to the preceding century. here the acuteness of observation and the freedom of the description make the work one of the masterpieces of the landscapes executed in France in the seventeenth century.

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