Jan van Huysum

"Jan, born at Amsterdam in 1682, was the eldest son and pupil of Justus van Huysum. Justus was the head of a family enterprise...with three younger sons assisting: Justus the younger, Jacob and Michiel. Their large-scale production met the demand for decorative flowerpieces...Jan did not choose to follow his father's example. From his marriage in 1704 until his death in 1749 Jan appears to have stayed in Amsterdam, but independent of the family. He jealously guarded his success...working in strict privacy that none might see the preparation of his pigments nor how he worked...He is said to have worked from the real flower and gone to Haarlem each summer to study specimens...Van Huysum possessed an unerring elegance of composition which enabled him to avoid the inbalance, the over-abundance that others risked...The artist left no word, no indication of how he really painted, no hint of his own philosophy. So the wondrous skills of Jan Van Huysum, the last of the great Dutch masters, leaves us as bemused as those of his predecessors a century and a half earlier." (Peter Mitchell, European Flower Painters, pp. 142-149)