Pieter Andreas Rysbrack

1684 – 1748

Flemish painter, active in England. In 1710-11 he was made a master in Antwerp, but c. 1720 he and his brother Michael Rysbrack settled in England, where they were joined by another brother, the still-life painter Gerard Rysbrack. In England, Pieter Andreas Rysbrack specialized in Flemish-style still-lifes and game pieces, he also painted a number of topographical landscapes and country-house portraits. His two sets of Chiswick House Gardens (c. 1729; Chatsworth, Derbys, and elsewhere), commissioned by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, were an influential contribution to the vogue during the second quarter of the 18th century for sets of garden views. An engraved View of Mr Pope's House at Twickenham by Nathaniel Parr - the only print of Alexander Pope's Thames-side villa to be issued in the poet's lifetime - was made in 1735 after a drawing (untraced) by Rysbrack; five years later Rysbrack painted a view of Richmond Ferry (London, Orleans House Gallery) from a spot a mile downstream. He remained in England for the rest of his life.

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