|
(2) Frans Huys
(b Antwerp, c. 1522; d Antwerp, before 10 April 1562). Engraver, brother of (1) Pieter Huys. He was evidently a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke by 1546, when he had a pupil registered under his name. His earliest dated prints are from 1555, only seven years before his death. He worked for the Antwerp print publishers Hieronymous Cock, Hans Liefrinck I (his brother-in-law) and Bartholomeus de Momper (1535–after 1589) and (in collaboration with his brother Pieter) for the book publisher Christoph Plantin. No paintings or drawings by Frans are known, and his prints all reproduce the work of other artists. Like many Antwerp engravers of the mid-16th century, he was influenced by Italian engraving, probably through the mediation of Giorgio Ghisi, who also worked with Cock. A series of Grotesque masks (Hollstein, nos 35–52) is strikingly similar to contemporary Italian work. Frans engraved many portraits of varying quality, chiefly of contemporary rulers, and several humorous genre subjects after Cornelis Massys. His most notable prints, however, were after drawings by Pieter Bruegel I: Skaters before the Gate of St George (Hollstein, no. 28), Naval Battle in the Straits of Messina (Hollstein, no. 15) and a set of Warships (Hollstein, nos 16–26). Frans Huys was perhaps the most successful of all the engravers who worked from Bruegel’s designs: his carefully controlled systems of hatching convey subtler effects of light and shade than those of Pieter van der Heyden and are a more faithful reflection of Bruegel’s pen lines than the somewhat flashy burin work of Phillip Galle.
Part of the Huys family
|
|
There are more than 45,000 articles in The Grove Dictionary of Art.
To access the rest of this article, including the bibliography, subscribe to
www.groveart.com.
To find out more about this subject, click on a related article below and
subscribe to www.groveart.com
|
