Gerard de la Vallée

Gerard de la Vallée (1596/1597 – after 1667) was a Flemish painter of landscapes and history paintings. His work was inspired by the great Flemish masters and mainly produced for the export market.

Life Little is known with certainty about the life of Gerard de la Vallée. The artist is probably identical with Gerard van den Dale, who was born in Mechelen in 1596 or 1597. A record dated 1636 of the artist acting as a witness for Guillam Forchondt and N. Lemmens is evidence that he was still in Antwerp at the time. Many of the works produced in the Forchondt workshop, including those of Gerard de la Vallée, used copper as the support. This made it easier to export them from Antwerp to Seville where Forchondt had a trading post. From Seville the artworks where shipped through Cádiz to Vera Cruz (Mexico) where they were sold to local convents. A series of signed works by the artist is preserved in Bogotá. The mining of images of other masters to create new works for the export market was a hallmark of the Forchondt workshop and is also evident in de la Vallée's work.

He collaborated with other painters. Collaborations with the figure painter Pieter van Avont are documented. An example is the Wooded Landscape with the Virgin, Christ Child and Saint John (At Lempertz on 21 May 2016, Cologne, Lot 1256).