Jan Wyck. Jan Wyck was a Dutch baroque painter, best known for his works on military subjects.
There are still over 150 of his works known to be in existence. In an era when French artists dominated the genre, the arrival of Wyck and other Dutch and Flemish artists in Great Britain from 1660 onwards provided the catalyst for the development of military and naval art in Britain.
Like other painters from the Low Countries such as Dirk Maas, Peter Tillemans and William van de Velde, Wyck moved to England and worked there throughout his life, often under royal patronage, producing many fine works of battle paintings, portraits, hunting scenes and landscapes as well as advancing the development of British art through teaching. Jan Wyck was born on 29 October 1652, in Haarlem, then part of the Dutch Republic.
The son of Thomas Wyck, also a Dutch painter, it is assumed that his father taught him to paint, although little is actually known of his early life. His father had spent much of the 1630s in Rome, refining an Italianate style, which can be seen in the works of both father and son.It appears likely that at a fairly young age he and his father moved to England during the reign of Charles II of England, possibly in 1664.
It also seems likely that they were in London at the time of the Great Fire of London, as his father created one of the last sketches of Old St Paul's Cathedral in its ruin