Watermill by a Wooded Outcrop

Gillis Peeters I (Antwerp 1612 - Antwerp 1653)

Biographical details are scarce concerning the land- and seascape painter Gillis Peeters I who was the elder brother of the more famous Bonaventura (1614-1652, see SK-A-1949 and SK-A-2518). He was the son of Cornelis Peeters and Catherina van Eelen (‘en van beter famille’), who had him baptized in the Sint-Walburgiskerk, Antwerp, on 23 January 1612. As is the case with his brother, it is not known who his master was, but as neither was registered in Antwerp as an apprentice, it seems likely that their tutelage took place elsewhere. Bredius suggested that the flower painter Anthony Claesz II (1616-1652) was his master in Amsterdam in 1631,² but the proposal is ignored by Meijer,³ and it seems improbable, particularly as no still lifes by Gillis are known.

Gillis became a master in the Antwerp guild in 1634/35 at the same time as his younger brother. They were to share a studio for at least the next five years or so. The two collaborated in a seascape, described as a Dutch Three-Master Anchored off a Southern Coast, of 1633,⁴ and they were both commissioned by Jacob Edelheer (1597-1657), the pensionary of the city of Antwerp, to execute a painting of the battle of Kallo near Antwerp (on 20 June 1638) in 1639. One other work of collaboration is known⁵ and for the rest they may have worked independently. It is suggested, below, that he may on one occasion have collaborated with Peeter Neeffs I (c. 1578-1656/61) as his brother more frequently did. But his extant oeuvre is small; he seems to have played no part in the life of the guild.

A signed, panoramic view of the harbour and village of Recife and the island of Antonio Vaz in Brazil, of 1637,⁶ has led to the proposal that he was in Count Johan Maurits’s of Nassau-Siegen retinue that set sail for Brazil on 25 October 1636.⁷ Certainly South-American scenes were to enter both brothers’ repertoire, but the proposal that Gillis made the six-month or so journey across the Atlantic and back has not won general acceptance and the matter remains unresolved.⁸ Certainly the artist gained no notoriety from such a journey.

Gillis Peeters married Elisabeth Smits at an unknown date, but probably in 1640/41 as the first child of the marriage was baptized on 16 October 1642. The family lived in De Zon, Korte Sint-Annastraat in Antwerp. He died in March 1653; his burial on 12 March in the Sint-Jacobskerk was a ceremony of some cost. He merited only a brief mention by Cornelis de Bie in Het gulden cabinet.⁹

REFERENCES
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 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, p. 60 and notes 1, 67, 133, 245, 261; F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, pp. 1046ff.