Gillis van Tilborch

Who was Gillis van Tilborch?

Gillis van Tilborch was a Flemish Baroque painter who specialised in group portraits and both "low-life" and elegant genre paintings. He possibly studied under David Teniers the Younger, and joined the Brussels painters' guild in 1654. HIs portraits of bourgeois sitters are similar to those of Gonzales Coques. He also painted gallery pictures, such as the Interior of a Picture Gallery with the Artist and His Patrons, that reflect the relationship between artists and patrons in the seventeenth century. The series documenting works held at Tervuren castle, where he was appointed keeper of the collection in 1666, are more extensive examples of the same trend in painting. He was in England around 1670–1671, where he painted The Tichborne Dole.