Alexander Keirincx

Who was Alexander Keirincx?

Alexander Keirincx was trained as a Flemish Baroque painter who later moved to Utrecht and ultimately to Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic. He became a master in Antwerp's guild of St. Luke in 1619, and like his teacher Abraham Govaerts he initially specialized in small cabinet-sized forest landscapes in the manner of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Gillis van Coninxloo. Also like Govaerts, Keirincx's early works typically show history, mythological or biblical subjects within a Mannerist three-color, schematic landscape bracketed by repoussoir trees. However, during the 1620s and '30s his landscapes become increasingly naturalistic, influenced by Dutch tonalism in the manner of Pieter de Molyn, Jan van Goyen and others.

The most singular moment in Keirincx's career was his sojourn in England and commission by Charles I of ten landscape paintings, mainly views of the king's castles and houses in Northern England and Scotland produced between May 1639 and mid-1640.