A trompe l’oeil still life of birds hanging from nails against a wooden wall

Laurent Geedts was a citizen of the Flemish town of Louvain and was the first member of a substantial family of painters and sculptors. His nephew Pierre Joseph, 1770-1834, was a genre, history and religious artist and the latter’s son Pierre Paul 1793-1856 was a portrait painter, lithographer and sculptor. There was also Guillaume-Auguste1802-1866 and his three sons Auguste, Hippolyte and Paul.

Laurent specialised in still life paintings and in particular as an architectural interior artist with the canvas incorporated over a chimney or as an over-door. His pupil was the Louvain based painter Francois Xavier Joseph Jaquin 1756-1826, and, like his pupil produced beautifully observed depictions of birds. His works in the illusionist style, with birds against plain or wooden effect walls where the natural light and shade effects, combined with very fine painting of the plumage, makes them appear real, continued the tradition of two of the masters of this form of painting in the Netherlands in the 17th century: Cornelis Biltius and Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts.


Bibliography: Dictionnaire des Artistes Plasticiens de Belgique des XIXe et XXe
Siecles - Paul Piron
Dictionnaire des Peintres – E Benezit
Trompe-l’Oeil Painting - Miriam Milman
Lexicon of the Belgian Romantic Painters – Willem G Flippo