Hendrik Herregouts

Hendrik Herregouts[1] (1633 in Mechelen – 1704 in Antwerp) was a Flemish history and portrait painter and draughtsman with an international career spanning Italy, Germany and his native Flanders.

[8] In 1664 Hendrik Herregouts became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp, but some years later we find him completing commissions in Mechelen.

[6] In 1685 he received a commission from the Confrerie of the Holy Sacrement to design a triumphal arch to commemorate the centenary of the restoration of the Catholic cult in the St. James' Church, Antwerp.

[6] Hendrik Herregouts was highly regarded in his time and he received many commissions for altarpieces and religious works in Flanders and abroad.

[8] He was influenced by the palette of various artists such as Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens as well as by Italian painters such as Titian, Rafael and Caravaggio.

[11] A Divine Friend of Children dated 1680 in the Göttweig Abbey near Krems in Lower Austria shows his mastery of colour and composition.

[6] An example is the Scholars Discover the Tetragram, the frontispiece of Henricus Engelgrave's book Coelum Empyreum published by Joannes Busaeus in Cologne in 1666.

[13] Herregouts has sometimes been confused with an obscure genre painter by the name H. or Hendrick Herdebout;[14] There is not always unanimity over the attribution of certain works to Hendrik or his brother Jan Baptist as their styles were similar.