Jacob Balthasar Peeters

Very little is known about the life and career of Jacob Balthasar Peeters. Some confusion about the facts of his life is caused by the fact that the name Jacob or Jacobus Peeters was quite common at the time, and there appears to have been at least one other contemporary Jacobus Peeters who was also a painter active in Antwerp. It is not clear when or where he was born. As he was mentioned as being 22 years old in a document dated 28 May 1683, he must have been born in 1660 or 1661. He was likely born in Antwerp as his father Daniel was a master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. His mother was Martina Wouters. On 28 May 1683, his mother and the marine and landscape painter Hendrik van Minderhout entered into a one-year contract pursuant to which van Minderhout was to teach Jacob to draw and paint. The contract further stipulated that "He will learn for a year, in the summer from 7am to 6pm, in the winter from 8am until the fall of darkness. He will paint landscapes and staffage. Outside of his working hours he is allowed to draw, sketch and paint after the works of his master, also on Sundays and holidays, for his own profit. The cost is 100 guilder, a possible second term costs 15 Flemish pounds. He may possibly be identified with the Jacobus Peeters constschilder (painter) who makes together with his wife Barbara Christina Witten a will on 7 June 1699, while living on Kipdorp near the St. James Church. His pupils included Jan-Baptist van Isschot, Jan Baptist van der Straeten, Jan Carel Vierpeyl, Rombaut Bacx and Nicolaas Gillis. If he is the Jacobus Peeter who was the widower of Barbara Christina Witten, he made his will as a widower on 20 November 1753, when he must have been already 92 or 93 years of age. ==Work==

Jacob Balthasar Peeters was a specialist painter of imaginary Renaissance and Baroque palaces and paintings of existing churches. Peeters would place among these imaginary or existing structures and outdoor settings elegant figures, usually wearing exotic hats and costumes, together with their, often black, pages and with dogs running around. Van Minderhout was a Dutch painter active in Antwerp who often contributed the figures to works by local landscape and perspective painters including Wilhelm Schubert van Ehrenberg. The aforementioned pair of pictures, which were made to be hung next to each other, demonstrate the fantastic, almost surreal, aspects of Peeters' imaginary views. One of the canvases provides an idealized view of a palace with round arched loggias supported by columns and the other of a courtly façade with a portico and a balustrade on top. The buildings are placed respectively on the left and right and disappear in the distance with foreshortening at the rear. Each painting continues onto a view of an idealized park landscape with a large pond on which float pleasure ships with swans as figureheads. The backdrop is a blue sky with brightly lit, white-gray clouds. The artist enlivened the scene by having light fall through the loggia arches, which contrasts with the architectural façade, which is in the shade. Groups of figures in the foreground include ladies and gentlemen who are as fanciful as the architecture. The figures are shown in theatrical, stage-like postures, some engaged in conversation. The ladies have towering hairdos and the gentlemen wear turbans or feathered helmets. A black servant carries the train of one of the ladies' dresses. A guard holding a lance is reclining against the façade of one of the palaces. Some dogs are running among these figures. A painting depicting the ''Courtyard of Rubens' House in Antwerp'' (Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury) was possibly painted by Jacob Balthasar Peeters or Anton Gunther Gheringh, another architectural painter active in Antwerp. ==Notes==