Matthijs Musson

Matthijs Musson (Antwerp, 1598–3 November 1678) was a painter and art dealer based in Antwerp, who played an important role in popularizing artists of the 17th-century Antwerp school by marketing them throughout Europe.

Matthijs Musson was born in Antwerp as the son of Robert Musson, an innkeeper. Matthijs is possibly a pupil in the workshop of Rubens and becomes a master in the Antwer Guild of Saint Luke in 1622. Matthijs married on 24 February 1632 Maria Borremans who died on 12 May 1646 without issue. In the year 1646-1647 he was deacon of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. Musson remarried on 15 September 1647 Maria Fourmenois who had been widowed two times before. Her last husband was the glass and ebony dealer Cornelis de Wael. After his marriage to Fourmenois, Musson started to deal in art and his wife played an important role in this trading business.

Musson had contacts with dealers throughout Europe. In Flanders, he was active mainly in Antwerp and Brussels. About 60 painters worked for Musson and Fourmenois including Joos de Momper, David Teniers the Younger, Abraham Willemsens, Victor Wolfvoet II and Willem van Herp. After discovering that works of painters from Mechelen, a city situated between Brussels and Antwerp, were of high quality and relatively inexpensive he started sourcing from this city. As a trained painter, he did not limit himself to trading. He gave detailed instructions to his artists and for instance paid Pieter van Lint to make changes to a human figure in one of his paintings.

In 1657 Matthijs Musson bought the art works from the estate of Frans Snyders, which included great works by Rubens and van Dyck as well as examples by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Joachim Patinir, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Joos van Cleve and Frans Ykens.

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