Flemish painter


Antwerp 1657 – 1720 Antwerp



 

Painter of genre scenes, battle scenes, animals, landscapes and horse markets.


 

Pupil of the battle scene painter Simon Johannes van Douw, according to Thieme-Becker already from the age of ten.



Brother of two other painters, Jan Frans (1662 – 1749) and Norbertus (1670 – 1746) van Bloemen. Pieter was the first teacher of Jan Frans (who later studied under Antoine Goubau).



Free master in the Painters’ Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp from the year 1673/74 onwards.



 

Circa 1684 Pieter visited Lyon in the company of Adriaen van der Cabel and of Gillis Weenix, both Dutch painters. His brother Jan Frans joined him in Lyon. From here both brothers travelled via Turin to Rome.



Between 1685 and 1692 Pieter was recorded as living and working in Rome. Here he was member of the so-called “Bentveughels”, an association of Nordic painters active in Rome. His Bent-name was “Standardo”. This nickname would have referred to the standards and banners that he regularly painted in his military subjects. His brother Jan Frans was called “Orizzonte” (“horizon”) because of his panoramic classical landscapes.



 

Pieter van Bloemen also worked as a staffage painter, painting figures in landscapes of other artists, such as his brother Jan Frans or Christian Reder.



 

By 1694 he was back in Antwerp, where he became Dean of the Painter’s Guild of Saint Luke in 1699. His brother Jan Frans remained in Rome until his death in 1749.



 

Numerous museums hold paintings by Pieter Bloemen. The Alte Pinakothek in Munich has eight of his paintings, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg five, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna three, the Prado in Madrid two. In France several museums have a total of 23 paintings by or attributed to Pieter van Bloemen: the Louvre in Paris (1), the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille (2), the Musée des Augustin in Toulouse (8) and other, smaller museums such as in Dôle, Valenciennes or Nantes. Other museums where one can find his paintings are the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Städelsches Museum in Frankfurt-am-Main, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp and three museums in Rome : the Galleria Barberini, Corsini and Pallavicini. 

 

 

For many centuries Rome and Italy have attracted numerous painters who come to study its contemporary and ancient Roman art, to enjoy its marvelous light and colourful population, or who just came to work there.

 

The Dutch, Flemish and also some German painters of Rome came together in the informal society of the ‘Bentveughels’ (‘group of birds’), also known as the ‘Schildersbent’ (‘group of painters’). Although created as a support for compatriots it soon became well known for its rather convivial meetings, in so far that in 1720 this joyful society was forbidden by papal decree for too many feasts had ended in the greatest disorder.

 

Every member got a surname, a so-called ‘Bentname’. Our painter was nicknamed ‘Standardo’ for he often painted military subjects. But he should have been called ‘cavallo’ or ‘cavaliere’ for he was most and foremost an excellent painter of horses, the common subject in his vast production, together with the Italian landscapes, backdrops and light.