Animalists Flanders
Jan Baptist Lodewyck Maes was a Belgian genre painter active in Italy. Maes studied at the Academy of Ghent. He exhibited for the first time at that city's fair in 1810. He won prizes in all the competitions he entered and in 1820 received a grant from the city of Ghent. Thanks to the Belgian Rome Prize received in 1821, he first visited Paris and then went on to Italy. In 1822 he copied works by old masters in the Uffizi Museum. In 1824 he settled in Rome. Maes kept in touch with his hometown and regularly sent works to Belgian salons. He was a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.
Izaak (Isaac) van Oosten was a Flemish Baroque landscape and cabinet painter active in Antwerp.
His landscapes are simple with open spaces and mostly hilly landscapes typically filled with a pond or road and several clusters of trees. There is an overall sense of gentleness and calm in these compositions. An even, gentle light spreads over the entire painting and the trees are untouched by the wind. A number of his landscapes have a Mediterranean flavour.
Works by van Oosten can be found in the collections of the Uffizi, the Museo del Prado, the Hermitage Museum, the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, the Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes, the Toledo Museum of Art and other museums.