General Gaspar de Witte is remembered for his landscapes and his collaborations with other artists on gallery paintings. His landscapes often included pastoral scenes with shepherds, religious scenes or genre scenes such as village fairs or dances. His landscapes often involved collaborations with other painters who painted the
staffage. Four collaborations with
Anton Goubau on Italianizing landscapes are recorded. In addition to imaginary landscapes he also produced a number of topographical views of country estates. These were often executed in collaboration with other painters who painted the
staffage. An example is the
View of Schoten Castle, which was a collaborative effort with
Gonzales Coques. This composition shows a bird-eye view of Schoten Castle in
Schoten painted by de Witte with two women and a boy painted by Coques in the front right corner. Another example of a collaboration with Coques is the
Portrait of Clara Rubens with Her Family, which shows Clara Rubens, the daughter of Peter Paul Rubens, with her family against a background landscape showing Merksem Castle.
Gallery paintings Gaspar de Witte was a collaborator in a few compositions belonging to the genre of the 'gallery paintings'. The 'gallery paintings' genre is native to Antwerp where
Frans Francken the Younger and
Jan Brueghel the Elder were the first artists to create paintings of art and curiosity collections in the 1620s. Gallery paintings depict large rooms in which many paintings and other precious items are displayed in elegant surroundings. The earliest works in this genre represented art objects together with other items such as scientific instruments or peculiar natural specimens. The genre became immediately quite popular and was followed by other artists such as
Jan Brueghel the Younger,
Cornelis de Baellieur,
Hans Jordaens,
David Teniers the Younger,
Gillis van Tilborch, Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg and
Hieronymus Janssens. The picture galleries depicted were sometimes real galleries. However, the majority were imaginary galleries, which sometimes included allegorical figures. An example of a gallery painting by Caspar de Witte is the ''Interior of an art collector's cabinet with many visitors'', which is a collaboration with
Hieronymus Janssens and
Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg. The composition depicts an imaginary art gallery with many visitors who are appreciating and discussing some of the artworks in the gallery. This gallery painting represents a later development in the genre initiated by David Teniers the Younger that excluded non-art objects from the gallery. The figures in the gallery painting are portrayed as if they form part of an elite who possess a privileged knowledge, i.e. the ability to appreciate art. The genre of gallery paintings had by that time become a medium to accentuate the notion that the powers of discernment associated with connoisseurship are socially superior to or more desirable than other forms of knowing. The picture can also be regarded as an allegorical representation of the vanitas of worldly pursuits such as war which are transient in comparison to the arts and love, which endure for forever. Gaspar de Witte was one of the collaborators in the gallery painting by
Jacob de Formentrou referred to as
Cabinet of pictures, currently in the
Royal Collection. It depicts a room full of pictures populated with human figures who are usually interpreted as representing art
connoisseurs. The various pictures that are hung on the walls of the room represent works of leading mid-17th-century artists of Antwerp.
A cabinet of pictures depicts an imaginary gallery and can be seen as a summing up of the best of what artists in mid 17th-century Antwerp could produce. It is believed that the pictures included in the composition were painted by each of the relevant artists. Gaspar de Witte is believed to have painted the landscape right of the door, signed G.D.WITTE. The fact that de Witte was selected to participate in this collaborative effort demonstrates the esteem in which he was held by his fellow artists in Antwerp in his time. ==References==