European

F. Mans

Flanders 17th C.
Winter Landscape 25.0175

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The seventeenth century in the Netherlands saw an explosion of artistic talent and development. The increasingly wealthy middle class bought paintings, prints, and furnishings for their homes. Artists scrambled to meet the demand, and tended to specialize in still life, flower painting, portraiture, history painting, genre scenes (scenes of daily life), landscapes and marinescapes. Mans was a landscape and figure painter who created numerous small pictures of towns, villages, and coast scenes. About his life nothing is known except that he probably lived and worked in Utrecht. The signature "FMANS" may be seen in the lower right corner. However, a Haarlem painter of summer and winter canal and city landscapes, Thomas Heeremans, who also lived during the latter half of the 17thc., signed his paintings, "THMANS." It is quite possible that the signature on the Davenport painting may indeed be read as "TH" and that this is the work of Thomas Heeremans not Fredericus Mans.

 

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