Willem de Heusch
1692 · Dutch Republic · Dutch Golden Age, Dutch Italianate landscape painting
The story
On many of Willem de Heusch's paintings the signature opens with three letters run together, G, D and H. The G stands for Guilliam, the form of Willem he used, or for Guglielmo, the Italian version he signed with while he was working in Italy in the 1640s. By 1649 he was home again in Utrecht, in the Dutch Republic, and sat on the council of the city's painters' guild with Jan Both and Cornelis van Poelenburgh, two Utrecht painters who had also worked in Rome.
De Heusch painted almost entirely in the manner of Jan Both, and he probably trained with him. His pictures are warm Italian landscapes of tall trees, mountain tracks and travellers with pack mules in late golden light. Poelenburgh, a specialist in small figures, is said to have painted people into some of them, as he did for Both. De Heusch also made 13 known etchings in the same spirit.
His pupil was his nephew Jacob de Heusch, who went on to paint Italianate views of his own. Willem de Heusch was buried in Utrecht on 9 March 1692.
