Simon Luttichuys
1610–1661 · Dutch Republic · Golden Age painting, Still life
The story
Around 1637 a painter recorded as Simon Littlehouse made a portrait of Thomas Morton, bishop of Durham, which belongs to St John's College in Cambridge. Littlehouse is very probably the English form of Simon Luttichuys, who was baptised in 1610 at Austin Friars, the church of the Dutch community in London. His father came from Münster and his mother from Goes in Zeeland, and all their children were born in London.
Simon and his younger brother Isaack both became painters and both ended up in Amsterdam. Isaack made his name with portraits. Simon made his with still lifes, many of them lavish arrangements of glass, silver and fruit, and their polished surfaces are thought to have influenced Willem Kalf, the Amsterdam master of costly tabletop still lifes.
By 1649 he had moved to Amsterdam. In 1655 he married there an Englishwoman from Norfolk, and he died in the city in 1661.
