Albert Bouts Biography
Aelbrecht Bouts (Louven, 1455 – Louvain, 1549) was a Flemish painter. He was born into a family of painters, the younger son of Dirk the Elder (ca.1415-1475), and brother of Dieric Bouts the Younger (ca.1448-1490). Jan Bouts (ca.1478-ca.1530), son of Dieric Bouts the Younger, also became a well-known painter. While Dieric, collaborating for a long time with his father in his workshop, continued his father's style, Aelbrecht instead set up his own business, still in the same city of Louvain and partially developed his own style distinguished by the flashy colours, the refined details and the richness of the scenes. From early works such as the Assumption Triptych and Saint Christopher, still stylistically under the influence of his father, Aelbrecht arrived in a later phase at elements inspired by Hugo van der Goes. as in the Adoration of the Shepherds from 1500. In Christ of Sorrows, he took up a theme dear to his father to develop it with a certain stylistic autonomy. In the works of the late sixteenth century, such as in the Mater Dolorosa, in Ecce Homo and in the Last Supper (1510), some of his father's schemes were traced, but executed with a new, Renaissance spirit subject to further derivations from the Antwerp school. Among the characteristic and personal elements of his art, the angular outlines of the characters, various landscape motifs, light and bright colors were highlighted. Among the public and private places that preserve Aelbrecht Bouts' paintings are the Bob Jones University Museum, the Gallery (Greenville, South Carolina), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), the Harvard University Art Museums, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Hood Museum of Art (Hanover, New Hampshire), the Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena, California), the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
