Jan van Huysum (April 15, 1682, Amsterdam - February 8, 1749, Amsterdam) was a Dutch artist.Little is known about Jan van Huysum′s life. He comes from a family of painters and quickly becomes the leading Dutch still life artist. Among his patrons were Prince William of Hesse, Duke of Orleans, Kings of Poland and Prussia, Elector of Saxony, Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford. The artist′s lifetime popularity is evidenced by the fact that at an auction held shortly after the artist′s death, his four landscape watercolors were sold for 1,032 florins, and a picturesque flower bouquet for 1,245 florins, while two paintings by Jan Steen were sold for Rembrandt′s "Head of an Old Man" , a still life by Willem van Aelst and a painting by Albert Cuyp were paid respectively 25, 30, 19 and 13 florins.Jan hid his work methods from other artists. His only student, and not for long, was Margareta Haverman. Unlike other masters of still life, he made preliminary drawings, painted pictures very carefully, sometimes over the course of many years. In the summer he traveled to Haarlem, the center of the Dutch gardening of those years, to observe flowers.Jan painted several landscapes, but he focused on still lifes. Jan van Huysum′s floral still lifes can be divided into two groups: some of them, the early ones, were painted on a dark background, others on a light one, which requires a higher skill of the artist for light modeling. “The luxurious bouquets of Jan van Huysum, created at the end of the" golden age "of Dutch painting, were intended to decorate state rooms in rich houses. Subtle colorful nuances, enamel luster of texture and decorative distribution of colorful spots of these paintings create a light joyful mood. The major perception of being in such works can be judged by the last canvas, where on the body of the vase, next to the image of a woman with lilies in her hand, is inscribed a saying from the Bible in Dutch: "Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither work nor spin."Features of the artistic manner of Jan van Huysum are clearly visible in two paired paintings "Flowers" (1722) and "Flowers and Fruits" (1723), commissioned by Lord Walpole and located in the Hermitage. “In his bouquets kept in light colors, he achieves a great power of colorful sounds. Especially characteristic in this respect is the painting "Flowers and Fruits" (1723), where, along with the light gamut of colors that determines the color, in the pile of fruits below and the exquisite pattern of curving vines above, one can feel the subtle artistic calculation of the master of the late still life. The meticulousness of the execution and the light colorful accord of Heisum′s paintings, who, like Jan Davids de Hem, used all the possibilities of conveying bouquets in a light environment, changed the very character of the still life. "
