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Willem van Aelst
1627 - 1683
Willem van Aelst was a Dutch artist who specialized in still-life painting with flowers or game. He was a good draughtsman and vivid colourist. Aelst's still-lifes are distinguishable from those of other Dutch painters, being frequently littered with bric-á-brac of Renaissance antiquarianism.
He was born to a family of prominent city magistrates. Initially he was taught by his uncle, painter Evert van Aelst in Delft to paint the still-life. Willem’s earliest known work, a Still-life with Fruit (1642; destroyed in World War II), is likely to have been influenced by his uncle’s style.
He joined the Guild of Saint Luke at Delft in 1643. Later that decade, between 1645 and 1649 he lived and worked in France. In 1649 Van Aelst traveled to Florence, where he served as court painter to Ferdinand II de Medici, grand duke of Tuscany. At this time, the grand duke also employed two fellow Dutchmen Matthias Withoos and Otto Marseus van Schrieck, the latter also a still-life painter who probably influenced Van Aelst's detailed and smooth style. They were known for their highly finished cabinet pictures.
Aelst returned to the Netherlands with them in 1656 — first briefly to Delft before settling in Amsterdam in 1657. Van Aelst’s usual signature on paintings, Guill[er]mo van Aelst, recalls his stay in Italy, as does the (occasional) use of his bent-name ‘Vogelverschrikker’ (scarecrow), which appears, for example, on a Still-life with Poultry (1658; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). He painted his famous ornate still-life paintings that depicted glassware, silver goblets, fruit, and flowers in luxurious compositions. Between 1652 and 1681 he produced over sixty game pictures containing hunter's quarry along with scrupulous studies of guns, leather pouches, powder horns, and other hunting accessories set on marble slabs.
He became one of the most prominent still-life painters of his generation, which allowed him to live on the Prinsengracht. He must have died in 1683 or shortly thereafter, as his latest dated work is from that year. Van Aelst taught Rachel Ruysch and several others.
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