Thomas Wijck
1677 · Dutch Republic · Dutch Golden Age painting
The story
In 1666 the Great Fire destroyed much of the City of London, and Thomas Wijck, a painter from Haarlem, was working in England at the time. Among his drawings is a small sheet showing Newgate, the city prison, in flames. He painted the fire more than once, and he also painted London as it had looked before it, with the great houses along the Strand, the street of noble mansions on the north bank of the Thames.
He crossed to England around 1660, the year Charles II was restored to the throne. At home he was an established figure and served that same year as dean of the Haarlem painters' guild. Twenty years earlier he had travelled in Italy, and the harbours and street scenes he saw around Rome and Naples gave him subjects for the rest of his life.
His son Jan, born in Haarlem in 1645, followed him to England and stayed. As Jan Wyck he painted battles and horses, among them the Battle of the Boyne, and taught John Wootton, later a leading painter of horses in 18th-century Britain. Thomas returned to Haarlem and died there in August 1677.
