Bonaventura Peeters the Elder

[2] On 5 July 1638 he received a commission of the pensionary of Antwerp to produce maps of the Siege of Kallo and Verrebroek which had occurred only one month earlier.

This earned him a subsequent commission from the pensionary for a large painting of the Siege of Kallo, which he completed in collaboration with his brother Gillis.

However, he moved in 1641 to Hoboken (Antwerp) where he lived in a spacious residence and worked in a studio with his pupils Catharina and Jan Peeters (I).

[6] Dramatic shipwrecks with dark billowy clouds form a significant part of his oeuvre, as do serene ports and "portraits" of ships.

[1][6][8] Many of Peeters' paintings depict actual locations along the North Sea and the river Scheldt and these subjects form the bulk of his artistic production.

He may have even travelled along the coast of Scandinavia as is shown by his views of the port of Archangel in Northern Russia one of which offers a scene of reindeers or elks pulling sledges.

[4] His many views of far-away Mediterranean and Middle Eastern ports reflect a growing taste for the exotic and are probably completely imaginary or derived from prints, including those by his younger brother Jan who had travelled in Southern Europe.

His collaboration with father and son Pieter Neeffs the Elder and the Younger, painters of church interiors, is documented in the signed examples in the National Gallery in London and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.