François Ryckhals
1647 · Dutch Republic · Dutch Golden Age, Baroque, Genre painting, Still life
The story
In Middelburg, the Zeeland port that housed a chamber of the Dutch East India Company, François Ryckhals painted two very different worlds. On some panels he showed dim barns and farmhouse kitchens, with vegetables, pots and animals heaped on the floor. On others he laid out tables loaded with gold and silver vessels, the kind of display a rich merchant of the town might own.
His grandfather had settled in Middelburg in 1589, most likely as a refugee from Antwerp, and the family stayed. Ryckhals learned from the example of painters in the town, among them Adriaen van de Venne, a painter of crowded, lively scenes, and spent time in Dordrecht and Rotterdam, where he saw the work of the Holland masters. In 1642 he married a daughter of the burgomaster of Tholen, a small Zeeland town. He died in Middelburg in 1647, and only about 20 of his paintings are known today.
