The Philosopher
About the painting
A white-haired bearded old man sits reading in a chair in his study, he rests his head in his hand and is surrounded by books, a quill pen and ink, various different types of vessels and a globe; a cat sits at his feet and a human skeleton hangs on the wall. Nicaise De Keyser (1813-1887) was a Belgian painter trained at the Academie in Antwerp with Mathieu Ignace Van Brée. He achieved his first success with altarpieces influenced by Rubens but by 1836 had made a name for himself as one of the leading figures of historical Romanticism. Commissions from royal courts and prominent families in Belgium and abroad followed. He travelled to England and Scotland (1835), Italy (1840), Germany (1865, 1868, 1869 and 1871) and Spain (1878, 1880). In 1848 he became a member of the Koninklijke Academie in Brussels and from 1855 to 1879 he was director of the Academie in Antwerp.
Read on
Both his large history paintings and his smaller genre pieces such as 1557-1869 are Romantic in subject-matter, inspiration and in the Baroque character of composition. The composition and subject matter of 1557-1869 recall the work of David Teniers the younger (1610-1690), a 17th century Antwerp artist who produced numerous paintings of philosophers and alchemists in their studies. In works such as V&A 525-1870 Teniers depicted an alchemist studying or devising experiments, surrounded by crucibles, alembics (distillation flasks) or athanors (large metal furnaces that resemble stoves), books, hourglasses, globes.
Victoria and Albert Museum
