HECKE, Jan van den

Flemish painter and etcher. He was born in Kwaremont near Oudenaarde, Flanders, moved to Antwerp at an early age, where he worked as an apprentice in the workshop of the little-known painter Abraham Hack (active 1623-1638 in Antwerp) for two years. In 1642 he became a member of the guild of St Luke. After spending some time in Italy and Brussels in the 1650’s, in 1659 van den Hecke settled definitively in Antwerp. He married and fathered at least three children; his son, Jan van den Hecke II (born 1661), also became a successful still-life painter.

Although he painted a couple of Roman cityscapes, some cavalry battles and several landscapes in an Italianate style, van den Hecke mostly specialized in still-life paintings. Among these are a number of pronkstillevens and a number of still-lifes with game in the style of Jan Fyt; it were his flower pieces, however, that were most sought after. Several of them found their way into the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, whose art collection went on to form the nucleus of the picture collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.