Pieter Boel

Pieter Boel or Peeter Boel (1626–1674) was a Flemish painter who specialised in lavish still lifes and animal paintings. He moved to Paris, where he worked in the gobelin factory and became a painter to the king. Pieter Boel revolutionized animal painting by working directly from live animals in a natural setting. He thus arrived at representations of animals showing them in their natural, characteristic poses. He had many followers in France.

He was born into a family of artists in Antwerp. He was the son of the engraver Jan Boel and the brother of engraver Quirin Boel II. His teachers were his father and Jan Fijt, a well-known landscape and animal painter. Jan Fijt had studied under the leading animal and still life painter Frans Snyders.

He is believed to have traveled to Italy in the 1640s or in 1651. His trip brought him to Genoa and Rome. In Genoa he stayed with his uncle, the painter and art dealer Cornelis de Wael who had established himself in that city.

Boel returned to Antwerp, where he was registered in the local Guild of Saint Luke as a wijnmeester (wine master) (a title reserved for the children of members of the guild) in 1650-51. After 1668 he moved to Paris. Here he worked for Charles Le Brun in his first tapestry workshop. He was appointed paintre ordinaire by King Louis XIV in 1674, but died in September of that year.

He was the father of Jan Baptist Boel the Younger and Balthasar-Lucas Boel. He was the teacher of his sons and David de Koninck.

Boel principally painted still lifes including flower still lifes, hunting still lifes, animal and fish still lifes, vanitas paintings and still lifes of weapons. He also painted some landscapes. Since most of his works are undated, it is difficult to establish a chronology for his work. Boel achieved a very high quality in his work. It is believed that a number of his compositions may have had their signature removed so that they could pass as works by Frans Snyders or his master Jan Fyt. Only recently a number of still lifes in museums, which were formerly given to Fyt, have been reattributed to Pieter Boel.

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