Willem Kerricx

Willem Kerricx or Willem Kerricx the Elder (2 July 1652, in Dendermonde – 20 June 1719, in Antwerp) was a Flemish sculptor active in Antwerp. His works comprise mostly sculptured church furniture, individual sculptures, both portrait busts as well as statues of saints for churches and funerary monuments. His style shows the transition from the highly dramatic expressiveness of the Antwerp late Baroque towards a more gracious and elegant Rococo style. He operated a large workshop in Antwerp which was continued by his son into the middle of the 18th century.

Life Kerricx was born in Dendermonde on 2 July 1652. His grandfather, also called Willem, was a sculptor as was his uncle Jan Kerricx. He was registered as an apprentice sculptor in the records of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in the guild year 1660–1661, when he was barely 8 years old. His master was the obscure sculptor Jan Baptist Buys. Some sources also mention Artus Quellinus the Younger as a master of Kerricx.

He was registered as a master at the Antwerp guild in the guild year 1674–1675. From their marriage three children were born: Willem Ignatius Kerricx who became a sculptor, painter and writer and took over the family business from his father, Catharina Clara who became a painter and aquarellist and Anna Maria. The more prominent of his apprentices are his son, Petrus Jacobus Galliard and Cornelius Struyf.

He collaborated with Hendrik Frans Verbrugghen on a marble communion bench (marble, 1695) in the St. James' Church, Antwerp. In 1711 he carved four confessionals for the Grimbergen Abbey near Brussels. These confessionals have also been attributed to Hendrik Frans Verbrugghen. He also made the funerary monuments for two abbots in the Saint Gertrude church in Leuven (partially destroyed at the end of World War Two). Confessional representing the Last Judgement, St. Paul's Church, Antwerp

His style shows the transition from the highly dramatic expressiveness of the Antwerp late Baroque towards a more gracious and elegant Rococo style. This is demonstrated in his best known work, the bust of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, the Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp). The work is qualitatively on the same level as the Italian and French court portraits of the late Baroque period.

Kerricx collaborated with several major sculptors in Antwerp, where he resided for most of his life. In the second half of the 17th century a few large sculpture workshops in Antwerp came to dominate the market. They were the workshops of the families Quellinus, van den Eynde, Scheemaeckers, Willemsens and Verbrugghen with whom Kerricx also formed an informal partnership. The close links between these Antwerp workshops resulted in a very similar style of late Baroque sculpture, which has made it often difficult to distinguish which artist or workshop produced a particular work.