Shooters in a Forest Glade

Adriaen Van Stalbemt (Antwerp 1580 - Antwerp 1662)

A versatile painter of small-scale figures and landscapes, whose surname was in his lifetime spelt with or without a ‘p’, Van Stalbemt was distinguished enough to be included by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) in his Iconography.³ Born in Antwerp on 12 June 1580 into a Protestant family, which emigrated to Middelburg after the Spanish recapture of Antwerp in 1585, Van Stalbemt was later outwardly to conform with the Catholic rite until towards the end of his life. After his death in Antwerp on 21 September 1662, he was buried at Putte, just across the border in the Calvinist United Provinces (his and his wife’s epitaph is recorded by Van den Branden).

He was enrolled as a master in the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1609. It is not known where and by whom he had been taught for he is not listed as an apprentice. His return from Middelburg may have coincided, or have been connected, with the Twelve Years’ Truce, agreed between the Spanish and the Dutch in 1609.

Van Stalbemt married Barbara Verdelft, the daughter of a dealer, on 13 May 1613. Their first and only child, a daughter, who died young, was baptized in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk on 22 June 1614. In 1616, he took on the first of his three recorded apprentices and was appointed dean of the painters’ guild for the years 1618/19.

In 1632, Van Stalbemt was one of several Antwerp specialists to be commissioned to provide what was clearly intended as an elaborate gilded and painted cabinet for the dealer Anthonie Goetkint. The following year, according to Van den Branden (referring to Cornelis de Bie’s handwritten notes), he spent ten months working for King Charles I in England, conceivably on the recommendation of Van Dyck. The king is recorded as having owned five of his landscapes, most notably two versions of the View of Greenwich (British Royal Collection Trust), one much reduced in size, in which Jan van Belkamp (1610-1653) introduced the foreground figures.⁴ It may have been this work, which was the most highly valued, of the five, at £8 (approx. fl. 80) in 1649. The five paintings are most likely the whole extent of his output in England which would confirm that his stay could not have been long.⁵

His activity in Antwerp subsequently becomes more amply documented. Following a noteworthy collaboration with Pieter Brueghel II (1564-1638) in 1618/19,⁶ he is known to have worked with both Jan Brueghel II (1601-1678) and Peeter Neeffs I (c. 1578-1656/61). He worked for the dealers Van Immerseel (in a letter of 1636 Stalbemt complains of ill-treatment),⁷ Musson⁸ and Forchondt.⁹ Works by him were owned by such notable Antwerp dealers/collectors as Victor Wolfvoet (d. 1652),¹⁰ Jeremias Wildens (d. 1653)¹¹ and Arnold Lundens (d. 1656).¹²

After the death of his widow in 1663, a short inventory was made of his richly furnished house, probably that on the Meir, which contained a ‘beste Voorcamer’, ‘groote ceuckene’ and a ‘groote neercamer’.¹³ Among the silverware, and in evidence of his stay in England, were listed two English knives and two English telescopes which latter he had perhaps acquired to assist in the depiction of the extensive panorama in his View of Greenwich.

REFERENCES
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermartste schilders, architecte, beldtowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuwe, Antwerp s.a. [1662], p. 228; F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, pp. 625-31; P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76, I, pp. 454, 527, 540, 549, 556, 566; II, 1876 (1961), pp. 141, 342; E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, II-VIII, passim; K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz, Adriaen van Stalbemt, 1580-1662, Kristischer Katalog der Gemälde, Zeichnungen und Druckgrafiek, Lingen 2018, pp. 10-11