Augustin Coppens

He is now mainly known for his tapestry designs and for his drawings and prints documenting the devastating effect on the civil buildings caused by the Bombardment of Brussels by French troops in 1695.

[5] A portrait painting of Coppens showing him standing with a paper roll and his brushes before a landscape with the ruins of Brussels was for a long time regarded as his self-portrait but is now believed to be by an unknown hand.

Coppens is mainly known for his tapestry designs and for his drawings and prints documenting the devastating effect on the civil buildings caused by the Bombardment of Brussels by French troops.

In their works of the early 1700s, Coppens and van Orley created mythological, romance, and genre scenes which were of a lighter spirit and tone than before.

[1] They contributed to the early 18th century move in the Brussels workshops towards more playful forms, away from the severe Baroque historical and mythological subjects and towards a lighter Régence style.

This development is apparent in the series on The Triumphs of the Gods on which Coppens collaborated with Victor Honoré Janssens for the workshop of Judocus de Vos.

In these tapestries Coppens showed his sophisticated use of colours with the greens and browns of the foreground merging into shades of yellow and blue.