“ HUYSMANS, the name of four Flemish painters who matriculated in the Antwerp gild in the 17th century. Cornelis the elder, apprenticed in 1633, passed for a mastership in 1636, and remained obscure. Jacob, apprenticed to Frans Wouters in 1650, wandered to England towards the close of the reign of Charles II., and competed with Lely as a fashionable portrait painter. He executed a portrait of the queen, Catherine of Braganza, now in the national portrait gallery, and Horace Walpole assigns to him the likeness of Lady Bellasys, catalogued at Hampton Court as a work of Lely. ”

“ His portrait of Izaak Walton in the National Gallery shows a disposition to imitate the styles of Rubens and Van Dyke. According to most accounts he died in London in 1696. Jan Baptist Huysmans, born at Antwerp in 1654, matriculated in 1676–1677, and died there in 1715–1716. He was younger brother to Cornelis Huysmans the second, who was born at Antwerp in 1648, and educated by Gaspar de Wit and Jacob van Artois. Of Jan Baptist little or nothing has been preserved, except that he registered numerous apprentices at Antwerp, and painted a landscape dated 1697 now in the Brussels museum. ”

“ The national galleries of London and Edinburgh contain each one example of his skill. Blenheim, too, and other private galleries in England, possess one or more of his pictures. But most of his works are on the European continent. ”