page_title: Jan van Huysum
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Jan van Huysum / Biography
context_page_description: Jan van Huysum, also spelled Huijsum, was a Dutch painter.
context_section_description: He was the brother of Jacob van Huysum, the son of the flower painter Justus van Huysum, and the grandson of Jan van Huysum I, who is said to have been expeditious in decorating doorways, screens and vases. A picture by Justus is preserved in the gallery of Brunswick, representing "Orpheus and the Beasts in a wooded landscape", and here we have some explanation of his son's fondness for landscapes of a conventional and Arcadian kind; for Jan van Huysum, though skilled as a painter of still life, believed himself to possess the genius of a landscape painter. Jan van Huysum's daughter, Francina Margaretha van Huysum, was also a flower painter and may have assisted her father in his work.
  Half of his pictures in public galleries are landscapes, views of imaginary lakes and harbours with impossible ruins and classic edifices, and woods of tall and motionless trees-the whole very glossy and smooth, and entirely lifeless. The earliest dated work of this kind is that of 1717, in the Louvre, a grove with maidens culling flowers near a tomb, ruins of a portico, and a distant palace on the shores of a lake bounded by mountains.
caption: Vase of Flowers, 1722
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