Jan Baptist van Meunincxhove

Jan Baptist van Meunincxhove[1] (c. 1620/25 – 1703/04) was a Flemish painter of cityscapes, architectural paintings, marine views and group portraits who was active in Bruges.

[5] Van Meunincxhove painted two remarkable paintings documenting events which occurred during the residence in Bruges of Charles II of England and his brothers Henry Stuart, Duke of Gloucester and James Stuart, Duke of York in the period from 22 April 1656 to 15 March 1659.

This was cause for great celebration among the local population and was immediately recorded in a poem by Ingelbrecht Cockuyt of the Bruges Chamber of Rhetoric.

Van Meunincxhove remembered the same event about 15 years later in two works that were destined for the new premises of the Guild of the Kolveniers (both now in the Groeningemuseum).

In the second picture depicting the Hoveningen, van Meunincxhove follows the style of genre paintings developed in Flanders after 1660 by artists such as Gillis van Tilborch: he depicts the two groups of three persons on the left foreground on a small scale while the persons surrounding the King have an abnormally long leg which serves to pull the viewer into the depth of the composition.