Pieter Boel

Pieter Boel or Peeter Boel (baptized on 10 October 1622 – 3 September 1674) was a Flemish painter, printmaker and tapestry designer. He specialised in lavish still lifes and animal paintings. He moved to Paris, where he worked in the gobelin factory and became a painter to the king. Pieter Boel revolutionized animal painting by working directly from live animals in a natural setting. He thus arrived at representations of animals showing them in their natural, characteristic poses. He had many followers in France.

Life He was baptized in Antwerp on 10 October 1622 as the son of Jan Boel and Anna van der Straeten. He was member of a family of artists. His grandfather Jeroom had been a painter who was registered as a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1620. His father was an engraver and his older brother Quirijn de Younger became an engraver. After studying drawing with his father he became a pupil of Jan Fijt, a well-known still life and animal painter. Jan Fijt had studied under the leading Flemish animal and still life painter Frans Snyders.

He is believed to have traveled to Italy in the 1640s or in 1651. His trip brought him to Genoa and Rome. In Genoa he stayed with fellow Antwerp painter and art dealer Cornelis de Wael who was a long-term resident that city and played a pivotal role in giving Flemish artists arriving in Genoa an opportunity to work. Boel later married de Wael's niece upon his return to Antwerp. On three occasions, his name appears in the Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi (Accounts of the Royal Buildings), including for providing designs for the Gobelins tapestry works. Boel was closely related to two Flemish artists, who also lived at the Gobelins: Adam Frans van der Meulen and Gerard Scotin, an engraver. In 1671 he was a witness to the wedding of Scotin. Van der Meulen's wife was the second witness. Scotin engraved a number of Boel's designs of animals and may also have been the publisher of engravings made by Boel himself. He died on 3 September 1674 of that year.

Boel follows to a large extent the style of his teacher Jan Fijt, in particular in his smaller compositions featuring a hare or a few birds in the open air. Boel's compositions differ from Fijt's works in their restraint and the smoother and more controlled handling of the paint. His palette also differs from Fijt's in his preference for accents of blue, red and pink.

During his stay in Italy Boel got to know the work of the Genoese artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and the still life painter Giuseppe Recco. He learned from these Italian masters to heighten the dramatic effect of his canvases by emphasizing the shadows. He also used red drapes in the background, a Baroque element par excellence, to enhance the atmosphere of his compositions.

Boel is known to have collaborated with fellow Antwerp artists Erasmus Quellinus II and Jacob Jordaens, who painted the human figures in his compositions.

Boel was accomplished in large-scale vanitas paintings depicting an abundance of fruit, flowers, game and precious objects. His masterpiece in this genre is the Vanitas Still Life in the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille. Charles Le Brun used Boel's studies for his own works.