WIJCK, Thomas - b. 1616 Beverwijck, d. 1677 Haarlem

Part of a Dutch family (spelt Wijck or Wyck) of painters and draughtsmen. Thomas Wijck was active for a short time in Italy and is best known for his scenes of popular life set in Roman squares and courtyards, themes he continued to paint even after his return to the northern Netherlands. He travelled to England shortly after the Restoration and was followed there by his son and pupil Jan Wyck, who remained in Britain for the rest of his career and played an important role in the development of English sporting painting.

Thomas Wijck’s training probably took place in Haarlem. He journeyed to Italy, presumably by 1640, the year in which a ‘Tommaso fiammingo, pittore’ (Thomas the Fleming, painter) is documented as residing in Rome in the Via della Fontanella. In 1642 Wijck was once again in the northern Netherlands, enrolled in Haarlem’s Guild of St Luke. It is unlikely that the artist was again in Rome in the spring of 1644 (as Busiri Vici maintained), given the fact that on 22 May of that year he was married in Haarlem. His presence in his native city is further documented in 1658, 1659, 1669 and 1676.