Joos van craesbeeck biography

Biography

Flemish painter Joos van Craesbeeck was the son of an alderman and baker.

The smoker joos van craesbeeck

In 1631 he became a citizen of Antwerp and was entered as a journeyman baker, probably at the age of about 25, though a Self-portrait in front of a Mirror (previously at the Kunsthalle, Bremen; now untraced) had an old inscription on the back (not in the artist’s hand) stating that Craesbeeck was 39 in 1647.

He married Johanna Tielens, the daughter of the deceased Antwerp prison baker, in the chapel of Het Gasteel, the Antwerp prison, in January 1631. In 1633–4 he was enrolled as a baker and painter in the Guild of St Luke at Antwerp, and in 1637 he was listed as the proprietor of a new house with a bakery there.

He subsequently moved to Brussels, where he became a master in the painter’s guild in 1651. In 1653–4 he registered two pupils with the guild.

According to de Bie and Houbraken, Craesbeeck was probably taught by Adriaen Brouwer; he may have met him in 1633 when Brouwer was in prison for