GAREMIJN, Jan Antoon

(b. 1712 Brugge, d. 1799 Brugge)

Flemish Rococo painter, the only Bruges painter to rise above mediocrity with his lively technique. He has been called - somewhat chauvinistically and flatteringly - the Flemish Boucher. In reality, he was a cheerful, popular narrator and talented craftsman, fascinated by the picturesque, coarse or even grotesque detail. Garemijn modelled his style on that of the genre painters of the seventeenth century, especially David Teniers. He was frequently asked to decorate dining rooms and salons, many of which survive in their original condition in stately homes and castles.

Garemijn’s lone masterpiece is the Digging of the Ghent Canal (1753, Groeninge Museum, Bruges). The gigantic scene is not only important from the sociological and historical point of view, but is also an artistic tour de force. We have to go back over two centuries to find a similarly populous panorama in the shape of Albrecht Altdorfer’s Battle of Issus (1529), in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

Garden of the Willaeys-Vleys Family at Groeninge, Bruges

The Garden of the Willaeys-Vleys Family, the attribution of which to Garemijn has been challenged, is an attractive and luminously painted document showing the rear of the Gruuthuse mansion and the gardens of Eeckhout Abbey, on which the Groeninge Museum was later built.

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The Pandreitje in Bruges

Thc Rococo was not an interesting period in Bruges painting or that of Flanders in general. Few works in this style sustain the quality achieved by Flemish artists in other periods. Jan Antoon Garemijn is the only Bruges painter to rise above mediocrity with his lively technique.

The Pandreitje was used as a vegetable market. Here meat-sellers occupy the portico of the prison building.

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