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2 February - 1 May 2000 Sunley Room Admission Free
Supported by The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation
The work of Cornelius Gijsbrechts is one of the most remarkable illustrations of the fashion for illusionistic painting that flourished in northern Europe in the seventeenth century. Dutch and Flemish painters, in particular, produced 'trompe-l'oeil' pictures that were designed to intrigue and astonish the viewer, to give a bewildering illusion of a three-dimensional reality that was constructed simply out of paint on panel or canvas. Among his most famous works are paintings of letter-racks - the letters, notes and other objects seemingly three-dimensional, ready to be plucked off the surface by the viewer.
Gijsbrechts's paintings were famous in Denmark. However, abroad he was virtually unknown, and he himself remains a mysterious figure, of whose life there is no record after 1672, though he probably lived until 1678. He was probably born in Antwerp after 1610 and he certainly became a member of the painters' guild there in November 1659. In 1668 he arrived in Denmark, already highly skilled in the art of illusionistic painting. In Copenhagen, he was enthusiastically taken up by the Danish court, and two successive kings, Frederik III and Christian V, acquired twenty-two paintings by Gijsbrechts - many of which were later hung in the royal art gallery (or 'Kunstkammer'), built in 1675, and conferred the title of Royal Portrayer on the painter.
Most of the illusionistic paintings that Gijsbrechts painted for the Danish kings are now in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, and are among the most celebrated works in the museum. This group will provide the majority of the works to be shown at the National Gallery. They include a number of superb 'trompe-l'oeil' still lifes and letter-racks, and his best-known works - several pictures that use paintings themselves as the subjects for artistic deception. Depictions of canvas paintings peeling convincingly off their stretchers, the famous surreal painting of the back of a canvas and the brilliant free-standing 'Artist's Easel': with assorted paintings, sketches, palette and all the paraphernalia of the painter apparently arranged on a real easel. All these extraordinary painted illusions will be here to mystify and amaze. Two pictures come from the collection of the Danish kings in Rosenborg Castle, one from the Museum of Fine Arts in Rouen, and one from the Ferens Art Gallery in Kingston-upon-Hull.
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