Gerard Thomas was a late Flemish Baroque painter who specialized in studio and picture gallery interiors. He became a master in Antwerp's Guild of St. Luke in 1688–89, and was dean twice. Many of his paintings reflect a trend in Antwerp painting around 1700 that show artists—often historical masters from earlier in the century like Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck

Anthony van Dyck

Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next...

 or Jacob Jordaens

Jacob Jordaens

Jacob Jordaens was one of three Flemish Baroque painters, along with Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, to bring prestige to the Antwerp school of painting. Unlike those contemporaries he never traveled abroad to study Italian painting, and his career is marked by an indifference to their...

—in their studios, surrounded by paintings and sculptures, and teaching the craft to a young apprentice. The masters are often only hinted by the works of art pictured in the painting itself, however.

Sources

• Filipczak, Z. Z. (1987). Picturing art in Antwerp, 1550-1700. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691040478