Jan Baptist Morel

Jan Baptist Morel or Jean Baptiste Morel (1662 – 1732) was a Flemish still life painter who specialized in flower pieces and garlands. He was a successful artist who worked in Antwerp and Brussels.

Life Jan Baptist Morel was born in Antwerp where he was baptized on 26 October 1662.

He achieved success as a painter in Antwerp. He married Maria Lomboy on 2 February 1689. The couple had six children. After his wife died in 1696, he was called to Brussels. There was at the time a significant demand for his work there to decorate buildings that were being reconstructed after the vile Bombardment of Brussels by the French.

He returned to Antwerp in 1710 as a wealthy man. He married a second time with Anne-Marie van Heymissen, who came from an aristocratic family of Brussels. He had problems with the local Guild of Saint Luke as he refused to join it. The Guild went so far as to seize works that he had exhibited. The paintings were sold by the Guild in 1713.

Morel is recorded back to Brussels in 1729 where he had rejoined the local Guild. He is believed to have died in Brussels in 1732.

Work Like his master Nicolaes van Verendael, Morel was a still-life painter specialized in flower pieces and garlands.

His 'garland paintings' go back on a genre of flower representation invented in early 17th century Antwerp by Jan Brueghel the Elder. The genre was subsequently practised by leading Flemish still life painters, such as Daniel Seghers. Paintings in this genre typically show a flower or, less frequently, fruit garland around a devotional image or portrait. In the later development of the genre, the devotional image was replaced by other subjects such as portraits, mythological subjects and allegorical scenes.

Garland paintings were usually collaborations between a still life and a figure painter. The Mauritshuis in The Hague holds two garland paintings attributed to the artist with respectively a portrait of a man and a woman in the centre.