Prolific and successful in his lifetime, Cornelius Johnson is the forgotten man of 17th-century British art. This display looks at a range of his paintings including rarely seen portraits of the King’s children.
Much 16th and 17th century British art – especially art made for the elites – was in fact produced by migrants, especially from the Netherlands. The portraitist known in Britain as ‘Cornelius Johnson’ (and in the Netherlands as ‘Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen’) had a reverse career trajectory. Born in London in 1593, to an exile from Antwerp whose family had originated in Cologne, Jonson apparently trained in the northern Netherlands.
Related CODART publications
Karen Hearn, “‘Neat finishing, smooth Painting, and labour in drapery’: the distinctive portrait style of Cornelis Jonson (1593-1661)”, CODARTfeatures, December 2015.