Marten Jozef Geeraerts

Marten Jozef Geeraerts
Martinus Josephus Geeraerts by Balthasar Beschey
Born	Marten Jozef Geeraerts c. 1707 Antwerp, Belgium
Died	c. 1791 Antwerp
Education	Jesuits' College of Antwerp Antwerp Guild of St. Luke
Occupation	Painter

Autumn, grisaille painting (oil on canvas), now in the Mauritshuis

Marten Jozef Geeraerts (1707–1791) was a Flemish historical painter. He excelled in grisaille painting in imitation of bas-reliefs.

Life

Born at Antwerp, he was intended for the law, and studied in the Jesuits' College. Preferring art, however, he became a pupil of Abraham Godijn, and was made free of the Guild of St. Luke in 1731. In 1741 he became one of the six directors of the Academy of Antwerp, who filled that office gratuitously. He died at Antwerp in 1791.

Major works

• Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp: The Fine Arts. 1760.
• Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium:
  • Christ and the Disciples at Bmmaus
  • The Saviour at the House of Simon the Pharisee
  • The Sons of Aaron punished by Fire from Heaven
  • The Woman taken in Adultery
  • Abraham and Melchisedeck
  • The Sacrifice of Abraham
  • The Sacrifice of Eli
• Mauritshuis: Autumn.
• Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille: Children with Goat.
• Kunsthistorisches Museum: Cupid and Psyche.

Trompe l’œil painting by Geeraerts, Nôtre Dame de Grâce, Cambrai

Between 1756 and 1760 he produced nine grisaille tromp-l’œil paintings for the abbey church in Cambrai which later became the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Geeraerts, Martin Joseph". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol. I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.