In short

Our painting stands close to a rectangular, signed composition by Gillis Peeters I from 1639 in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Therefore the hardly visible third digit in our painting (a 3 or a 5) should very probably be read as a “3”, dating thus our painting from 1636.

Our Gillis I Peeters was the eldest brother of two famous marine painters, Bonaventura I and Jan I Peeters. Although all three were active in Flanders, they must often have worked for Dutch patrons: Dutch ships regularly appear in their paintings.

About Gillis Peeters I

Sometimes called Egidius Peeters I.

Flemish painter
Antwerp 1612 – 1653 Antwerp

Landscape, genre and marine painter and engraver.
Pupil of Anthony Claesz. II.

Gillis was the eldest of three famous brothers; Bonaventura I and Jan I, who were both best known as marine painters. Their sister Catharina was a still life painter.

Gillis Peeters became, together with his brother Bonaventura, Master in the Painter’s Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in the year 1634/35. Both brothers shared a studio in Antwerp.
Around 1637 Gillis must have travelled to the Dutch colonies in Northern Brazil and Guyana, where he made topographical landscapes.

Our Gillis the Elder painted local Flemish or Dutch landscapes, such as our painting, but also mountainous Alpine views and Nordic sceneries.
His early landscapes show a Mannerist touch, including mountainous Alpine landscapes related to the Flemish painter Jan Tilens.
From the middle of the 1640s he worked under the influence of the Dutch painter Allaert van Everdingen. Everdingen (1621 – 1675) travelled to Norway and Sweden in 1644-45; this stay influenced him in his choice of subjects, Nordic mountains, woods and waterfalls.

Our painter was the father of Bonaventura II, Willem and Gillis II, all of them painters.

-       Bonaventura II was a pupil of his uncle, Bonaventura I: his landscapes are influenced by his father, his seascapes by his uncle.

-       Of Willem nothing is known.

-       And of Gillis II there is only one dated painting, a landscape, known. He died in a convent in present-day Indonesia, then a Dutch colony, at the age of 33.

Why should you buy this painting?

Because it is an excellent river view, a daring creation set in an oval form.