Gillis Neyts

Gillis Neyts or Aegidius Neyts (1618 or 1623–1678) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and engraver. He was a landscape artist who is now mainly known for his italianising and topographical drawings of sites throughout the Southern Netherlands. He was a less prolific painter of landscapes and also produced a number of landscape prints. He further left a great number of figure studies.

Life The location and date of his birth are not known with certainty. It is likely that he was born in Ghent where he was baptized on 4 May 1623. However, there is also a record in Namur dated 10 June 1665, in which he is listed as a native of Overijse. An album with drawings mentions him as a native of Lille.

It is not clear with whom he trained. Some scholars mention as a possible teacher the Antwerp painter, draftsman and printmaker Lucas van Uden since some of Neyts' landscape paintings reflect van Uden's style. However, there is no evidence for this presumed pupilage. In 1643 he was living in Antwerp where he married Clara de la Porte. The couple had two daughters and a son. In 1647 he was registered in the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp as a master painter and engraver. In 1650 he spent some time in Dortrecht.

From 1662 he is known to have been active in the Meuse valley around Namur and Huy where he made many studies of the landscapes. In 1665 he is registered as a poorter of Namur. He enjoyed the patronage of the local monasteries. He travelled widely throughout the Meuse region and portrayed its cities, steep-banked valleys, imposing castles, ruins, rivers and luxuriant forests. His subjects are either imaginary, idealised panoramas or topographical views of towns and villages. He often placed figures in his landscapes to animate the foreground or the composition. Even his works on religious themes were landscapes with small devotional figures included.

Neyts was able to develop his landscapes with infinite variation in both technique and scale.

Many of the drawings are signed or part of drawing albums. A majority of these drawings are small and executed in brown or black ink with a fine nib. Some of the drawings are on vellum. Neyts was, along with Jan Siberechts and Lucas van Uden, one of the most accomplished artists in the use of both watercolours and bodycolours in his drawings. His penwork is delicate and characterized by the use of numerous dots and short strokes of the pen, sometimes accompanied by long sinuous meandering lines. Occasionally Neyts added grey wash or watercolour.

Some of the imaginary scenes incorporate distant views of the church spires of Antwerp. Wenceslaus Hollar and the calligraphic style of Jacques Callot were probably influences on his landscape drawings. He is likely to have known these artist's prints rather than their drawings.

Paintings His paintings also depicted imaginary and, less often, real views. They are typically in the blue-green tones characteristic of his Flemish contemporaries such as Lucas van Uden and Gillis Peeters. The compositions are derived from his drawings and his distinctive drawing style is duplicated in his handling of trees and figures.

Printmaking Neyts created several etchings, sometimes after his drawings, while other artists used his designs for their own prints. Neyts' prints display the same personal style as his drawings.