Willem de Heusch

WILLEM DE HEUSCH 1625 – Utrecht – 1692 Willem de Heusch was born in Utrecht in 1625, the son of the postmaster Hendrick de Heusch and Jenneke Tentenier, who was from Cologne. He was a pupil of Jan Both, whose Italianate landscapes he emulated. De Heusch went to Italy circa 1640-45 and subsequently signed his works G (for Guglielmo) de Heusch. (This signature is sometimes confused with his nephew and pupil Jacob de Heusch (1656-1701) who also went to Italy and Italianized his name to Giacomo). Willem de Heusch returned home via Lyon and was back in Utrecht by 1649, when he was Dean of the Guild of St Luke; Jan Both and Cornelis Poelenburg were on the council in that year. De Heusch specialized in Italianate landscapes, with delicate, rippling foliage and the evocation of a sunny, Arcadian world. As well as paintings in oil on panel and copper, he made a number of etchings of Italianate landscape, a few with mythological themes, such as Landscape with Pan and Syrinx (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). He sometimes collaborated with Poelenburg and Johannes Lingelbach, who provided the figures in his paintings. Heusch died in Utrecht in 1692. The work of Willem de Heusch is represented in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the Centraal Museum, Utrecht; the Mauritshuis, The Hague; the Louvre, Paris; the National Museum, Copenhagen; the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Worcester Art Museum, MA.