About Gysbrecht Leytens

Flemish painter
Antwerp 1586– 1642/1657 place unknown 

Painter of Summer and of Winter landscapes.

Pupil in 1598 of Jacques Vrolyck, who was also active as an art dealer. He was born in present-day Northern France in Béthune. He came to Antwerp circa 1569 and became a Master in the local Painter’s Guild in 1571. He died in Antwerp in 1611. Leytens actually joined the Antwerp Painter’s Guild as a Master that very year that his Master passed away, in 1611.

Leytens was between 1615 and 1625 member of the Chamber of Rhetoricians, the Olijftak. From 1624 until1628 he was Captain of the Antwerp Citizen Guard. It is not known where our painter lived during the last decades of his life. Some sources mention that he left Antwerp after his father passed away in 1627.

Leytens specialised in attractively composed so-called wing landscapes, inspired by the slightly earlier Mannerist landscapes of his fellow townsmen, such as Joos de Momper II and Abraham Govaerts. These wings (“coulisses” in French and Dutch) refer to the spaces at the side of a theatre stage where the actors come from. Tree stems lead the viewer’s eye spontaneously into the central, deeper part of the composition.

Leytens also painted landscapes for Sebastiaen Vrancx and for Frans Francken II.