Joos van Craesbeeck

Based on information provided by contemporary Flemish biographer Cornelis de Bie in his book Het Gulden Cabinet van Craesbeeck is believed to have become Brouwer's pupil and best friend.

[4] According to the artist biographer Jacob Campo Weyerman, Daniël Boone was also his pupil but there is no independent evidence for such apprenticeship.

[5] The death date of van Craesbeeck is not known with certainty but it must be situated between 1660 and 1661 since in 1660 a Lucas Viters was registered as his pupil at the Guild and a year later Cornelis de Bie reported him as deceased.

[4] Joos van Craesbeeck painted mainly genre scenes and a few religiously themed compositions.

[3] Despite the difficulty of dating his paintings, it is believed that his earliest works are largely indebted to the subject matter and style of Brouwer.

[3] After Brouwer's death in 1638 van Craesbeeck turned to other artists for inspiration and borrowed ideas from contemporary Dutch painters.

A set of works from this period is characterized by its vivid colours and the use of his own repertory of figures: bearded men with flat or fur-decked caps, women with white bonnets or conspicuous straw hats.

The term tronie typically refers to figure studies not intended to depict an identifiable person, but rather to investigate various forms of facial expression.

The dissolute self-portrait was a form of self representation of artists that arose in Dutch and Flemish genre painting in the 17th century.

These self-portraits aimed to emphasize the artists' dissolute nature by creating associations with traditional moral themes such as the Five Senses and the Prodigal Son in the tavern.

This painting shows him grinning, with bulging eyes, untamed hair and dressed in peasant's clothes.

His composition the Painter’s Studio is a tableau vivant showing figures symbolizing the Five Senses seated around a table while the artist is working at his easel.

An example is the Lute Player (Liechtenstein Museum), which shows two women entertaining a cavalier, who seems to have passed out with a full glass of wine in front of him.

Guardroom scenes often included mercenaries and prostitutes dividing booty, harassing captives or indulging in other forms of reprehensible activities.