Jacob van Hulsdonck
1582–1647 · Southern Netherlands · Still life, Flemish Baroque, Northern Baroque
The story
Jacob van Hulsdonck painted still lifes in Antwerp for almost 40 years, yet only one of his roughly 100 known pictures carries a date, a breakfast piece with fish, ham and cherries of 1614, now in the Bowes Museum in England. What he did add was his name, and more than half his paintings are signed in full, in capital letters.
Born in Antwerp in 1582, he grew up in Middelburg in Zeeland and probably trained there, then came back and joined the Antwerp painters' guild in 1608. A year later he married and moved into the house he lived in for the rest of his life. He specialised in baskets and bowls of fruit, laid tables and flowers, like the Mauritshuis's Roses in a Glass Vase. His son Gillis also became a still-life painter, in Amsterdam.
