Gillis Neyts

He was a landscape artist who is now mainly known for his italianising and topographical drawings of sites throughout the Southern Netherlands.

[2] He collaborated with Jacques Nicolaï who painted the figures in 18 landscapes commissioned by the Church of the convent of Croisiers in Namur.

[5] He travelled widely throughout the Meuse region and portrayed its cities, steep-banked valleys, imposing castles, ruins, rivers and luxuriant forests.

[3] While in his early career Gillis Neyts produced some religious and mythological paintings, the vast majority of his later output was as a landscape artist.

[7] The paintings and drawings are characterized by the high quality of their execution and a constant desire to translate the peaceful atmosphere of the regions he visited.

A majority of these drawings are small and executed in brown or black ink with a fine nib.

[9] Neyts was, along with Jan Siberechts and Lucas van Uden, one of the most accomplished artists in the use of both watercolours and bodycolours in his drawings,.

[7] His penwork is delicate and characterized by the use of numerous dots and short strokes of the pen, sometimes accompanied by long sinuous meandering lines.

Wenceslaus Hollar and the calligraphic style of Jacques Callot were probably influences on his landscape drawings.

They are typically in the blue-green tones characteristic of his Flemish contemporaries such as Lucas van Uden and Gillis Peeters.