Alexander Keirincx

[6] While it is not recorded who his master was, it has been suggested that it was the leading Antwerp landscape painter Abraham Govaerts.

[6] It is possible he visited England in 1625 as three drawings with a pen and washed showing a view of parliament house in London and the Westminster and dated 1625 were recorded in the 18th century.

His career and contributions to art history and especially to the development of painting in Britain have long been obscured by mistaken identity, lack of documentation and variant name spellings.

[2] Like his presumed master Abraham Govaerts, Keirincx initially specialized in small cabinet-sized forest landscapes in the manner of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Gillis van Coninxloo.

[3] 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.

[3] However, during the 1620s and 1630s, his landscapes become increasingly naturalistic, influenced by Dutch tonalism in the manner of Pieter de Molyn, Jan van Goyen and others.

[7] A key event in Keirincx's career was his sojourn in England during which he received a commission of King Charles I of ten landscape paintings.

[7] One example, Distant View of York at Tate Britain, shows an important site in the campaign of the First Bishops' War.

The importance of this series and its impact on later painting in Britain is hard to overstate, as Keirincx combined the aesthetic landscape tradition with that of the taste for detailed, topographical views, firmly grounded in Caroline court culture.