page_title: Jacob Campo Weyerman
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Jacob Campo Weyerman / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Stilleven met bloemen. Boeket bloemen met rozen, passiebloem en winde in een glazen bokaal op een tafel.
context_page_description: Jacob Campo Weyerman was a painter and writer during the period known as the Dutch Enlightenment. His work encompassed flower and fruit still life paintings, satirical magazines, plays, and biographies of painters. He usually signed his paintings with Campovivo.
context_section_description: As tradition holds, he was born in a military camp outside Charleroi, where his father fought in the Dutch army against the French. His mother was a very independent woman of Scottish descent, Elisabeth Sommeruell, who kept a market tent in Charleroi and eventually was able to afford a house in the center of Breda. There he was taught in the arts and on reaching his majority, traveled to London in 1704 and found work at the academy of Godfried Kneller. 
  He claims that he also studied oil painting with the Flemish flower painter Simon Hardimé. He specialized in the painting of flowers and fruit. According to the almost contemporary artist biographer Arnold Houbraken, he was a member of the Bentvueghels with the nickname Compaviva, but this may be a mistake. Though Weyerman was known for his embellishments of the truth, he never boasted about the Italian bent. Houbraken may have confused him with Jakob Christoph Weyermann, a German painter active in Augsburg in the first half of the 17th century. In 1720 he returned to the Netherlands and started a periodical called Hermes.
  He wote prose in a colorful style, and could flatter as easily as he offended his contemporaries. Jacob Campo Weyerman is not only interesting to modern readers for his literary qualities, but also as a source for historians on cultural life in the 18th century. Especially his magazines give a glimpse of daily life in Dutch taverns and coffee houses and the tourist attractions of his day.
caption: Still life of flowers in a glass vase, Rijksmuseum
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