Getty Museum
Forest Scene
Creator
Gillis van ConinxlooFlemish Artist · 1544–1607
All works by this person →Born into a family of painters, Gillis van Coninxloo first apprenticed in Antwerp with Pieter Coecke van Aelst. After a sojourn in France, he joined Antwerp's Guild of Saint Luke by 1570. With religious strife in the Spanish-occupied Netherlands, the Calvinist Coninxloo fled north to escape persecution in 1585 and moved to Germany in 1587. His experience drawing tapestry cartoons there may have in
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1595–1610
- Medium
- Brush and gray and white gouache, on paper toned black on prepared paper
- Culture
- Flemish
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- f7f82516-197c-40ab-a5ee-ed24255dd29c
From the Getty Museum record
An unknown artist created this haunting scene filled with a maze of paths and aged, gnarled trees casting looming shadows. By using black paper and showing the forest at night, he accentuated nature's drama. Moonlight glints off twisted roots and leaves, piercing into the groves in the distance, partially illuminating but never fully revealing what is taking place. Humans appear only in the background, framed by the twisted tree trunks: two tiny figures making their way to the moated fortress at the left. The drawing's large scale and the artist's use of grisaille make it rare among the relatively common Dutch and Flemish drawings rendered in colored wash around 1600. At this time, some artists began to depict the forest as a place of mystery. Gillis van Coninxloo and his followers, known for their close-up views of nature, were among this group.
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