page_title: Jan Weenix
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Jan Weenix / Life
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Prent/ Panorama: Foto van prent van panorama (opmerking: Bijschrift: Panorama van de Munttoren) This is an image of rijksmonument number 3729
context_page_description: Jan Weenix or Joannis Wenix was a Dutch painter. He was trained by his father, Jan Baptist Weenix, together with his cousin Melchior d'Hondecoeter. Like his father, he devoted himself to a variety of subjects, but his fame is chiefly due to his paintings of dead game and of hunting scenes. Many pictures in this genre formerly ascribed to the elder Weenix are now generally considered to be the works of the son.
context_section_description: Jan Weenix was born in Amsterdam according to his notice of marriage in 1679 but his date of birth is not exactly known as the baptismal record of this catholic church did not survive. Between 1643 and 1647 his father worked in Italy. Around 1649 the family moved to Utrecht. At some time Jan Baptist Weenix moved into a castle near Vleuten, but died rather young in 1659. By the age of twenty Jan Weenix rivalled and then subsequently surpassed his father in breadth of treatment and richness of colour. Jan Weenix was a member of the Utrecht guild of painters in 1664 and 1668. In 1679 when Jan Weenix married the 20-year-old Pieternella Backers he told the schepen he was "around thirty"! Between 1680 and 1700 they had 13 children baptized in a hidden church; at least four sons: Jan Baptista (1680-), Willem Ignatius (1690-1764), Jacobus (1693-), Nicolaes Andreas (1699-1757) and two daughters Sara and Maria. 
  In 1697 he painted a portrait of Peter the Great, visiting the Republic to study shipbuilding, science and the art of fortification building. In Amsterdam Weenix was frequently employed to decorate private houses with wall-paintings on canvas. The five fixed paintings or wallpaper on canvas for Jacob de Granada became very popular in the second half of the 18th century, when nature and Rousseau were fashionable and copied. The paintings survived in the house until 1922. Then the enormous "paintings" were sold before an auction  to William Randolph Hearst in a private arrangement. After Hearst went bankrupt, the paintings were dispersed; one is in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, two are in Hotel Carlyle in New York, one has been in the Allen Memorial Art Museum since 1953 and one is lost.
  Between 1702 and 1712 Weenix was occupied with an important series of twelve large hunting pictures for the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm's castle of Bensberg, near Cologne.  (According to Goethe Weenix surpassed nature.)  Also Eglon van der Neer, Rachel Ruysch, Adriaen van der Werff had a very good relation with the court, being paid well or knighted as ridder and most probably meeting an international crowd of artists and musicians. The treasury was empty when Jan Wellem, as he was called in Düsseldorf, died. Most of this collection is now at the Munich Gallery, but the paintings of Van der Werff moved to the cellar. Weenix' pupils were his daughter Maria Weenix and Dirk Valkenburg.
  Jan Weenix lived most of his life in a house across the Mint Tower and was buried in Nieuwezijds Kapel a nearby catholic church on the Rokin. His widow and daughters stayed in the masonry business selling stones and tiles.
caption: View on the "Binnen Amstel", with in the middle the house where Weenix lived.
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