Jacob Grimmer

Jacob Grimmer (c. 1526 – before May 1590) was a Flemish landscape painter and draughtsman. His rural scenes and landscapes of views around Antwerp marked an important development in 16th century Flemish landscape painting away from the world landscape with its fantastic panoramas and whimsically shaped gigantic rocks towards greater simplicity and authenticity. His work influenced the next generation of Flemish landscape painters. Grimmer was a capable colorist who was able to create harmonic landscapes by using realistic colours and atmospheric values effectively.

Life Jacob Grimmer was born in Antwerp as the son of the small merchant Nicolaas and Elisabeth Cops. According to the early Flemish biographer Karel van Mander, Grimmer first learned to paint landscapes from Matthys Cock and later from Christian van den Queborn, both of Antwerp. There are no written sources, which confirm these apprenticeships.

The only documentary evidence relating to Grimmer's training is his registration in 1539 under the name Iaques Grimmaer in the liggeren of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as a student of Gabriel Bouwens. It is therefore not certain that Grimmer in fact was a pupil of Matthys Cock and Christian van den Queborn. Grimmer became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1547.

Grimmer married Lucia van de Wouwer in April 1548. Of the four children born out of this marriage Abel became an important landscape and architectural painter. There is some disagreement among art historians as to whether or not Grimmer traveled to Italy as many of his artist contemporaries did. He bought a house in the centre of Antwerp where he set up his studio. He was known for painting after nature in the areas around Antwerp. Karel van Mander described Grimmer as 'such an outstanding landscape painter that in some respects I do not know a better one, so lively and lovely were his skies'. Grimmer's art was appreciated not only by his contemporaries but also by artists of the next century. Both Pieter Lastman and his famous pupil, Rembrandt, owned landscapes by Grimmer. Rembrandt's inventory of 1656 included a winter landscape by Jacob Grimmer.

Jacob Grimmer was an active member of the local chamber of rhetoric Violieren where he was celebrated as a poet and author of comic writings. He died before May 1590 in Antwerp. He often returned to the subject of the Four Seasons and the Twelve Months. He was known for working directly from nature as was reported by Karel van Mander.

Grimmer's work was influential on the next generation of Flemish landscape painters including his son Abel as well as Gillis van Coninxloo, Jan Brueghel the Younger and Jan Wildens.

Prints Some of Grimmer's landscape designs were turned into prints. A set of 12 Landscape Views in the Environs of Antwerp were engraved by Adriaen Collaert.

Jacob Grimmer also designed a set of four roundels of Landscapes with Cephalus and Procris. They were engraved and published by Philip Galle. The first two of the prints were based on the landscape backgrounds in two drawings with Hagar, Ishmael and the Angel (1586, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). Both the mythological subjects as well as the scenery with its rolling hills and punctuated by a few tall trees, reveal their debt to Hieronymus Cock's 1558 landscape print cycle of 'Landscapes with Biblical and Mythological Scenes' after designs by his brother Matthys Cock.