Artus Wolffort

Artus Wolffort, Artus Wolffaert or Artus Wolffaerts (1581–1641) was a Flemish painter known mainly for his history paintings depicting religious and mythological scenes.

Life

Artus Wolffort was born in Antwerp and moved with his parents to Dordrecht in the year of his birth. He trained as a painter in Dordrecht where he joined the local Guild of Saint Luke in 1603. He returned to Antwerp around 1615 where he worked as an assistant in the studio of Otto van Veen, one of the teachers of Peter Paul Rubens. During this period he lived in the house of van Veen. He became a member of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1617.

He married Maria Wandelaer on 8 September 1619. Their son Johannes Artusz (better known as Jan Baptist Wolfaerts) was born in November 1625 and later became a painter.

His pupils included his son Jan Baptist Wolfaerts, Pieter van Lint, Pieter van Mol and Lucas Smout the Elder. He died in Antwerp.

His early works were in the classizing style of Otto van Veen. Wolffort regularly used themes and motifs of van Veen in these early works, which were executed in a proto-Baroque style. This is obvious in the work Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee (one version auctioned at Sotheby's 4 November 2009, London, lot 56, one version in the church of St. Martin, Bergues, and another in the New Gallery (Kassel) (now considered a copy)), which was originally considered a work by van Veen. The composition itself is loosely based on Rubens' work of the same subject in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, but reversed. A more dynamic Baroque style influenced by Rubens arose after 1630.