- NameKarel Breydel
- Sexmale
- Nationality/DatesFlemish, born 1678, dead 1733
BiographyKarel Breydel was a painter of battle scenes and
landscapes. His works are characterised by their
wealth of detail, drama and movement and their
thoughtful composition, which often situates ruins
and building in the landscape. In his youth he was a
pupil of the portraitist Peter Yckens and after his
death in 1695 of the landscape painter Pieter Rysbraeck.
He worked in Nuremberg and Frankfurt am
Main and, together with his brother, at the court of
Hessen-Kassel. In 1703 he executed copies of works
by Jan Robert Griffier and Jan Brueghel I for Jakob
Vos, an art dealer in Amsterdam. In 1704 he became a
member of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp. In 1723
he was active in Brussels together with Jacob van
Hellemont and in 1726 in Ghent. His first biographer,
J. B. Decamps, divided his oeuvre into three
periods, in the first he imitated Jan Griffier, in the
second he copied Jan Brueghel and he began the third
phase by plagiarising works by Van der Meulen
before developing his own highly personal style.