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271:. He soon started painting conversation pieces: informal, but elegant group portraits in sophisticated colours of families or friends set in a domestic interior or more often in a garden setting. This new type of portrait painting was very popular in England from the 1720s. The persons depicted in conversation pieces may be members of a family as well as friends, members of a society or hunt, or some other grouping who are shown sharing common activities such as hunts, meals, or musical parties. Van Aken together with other foreign artists such as
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and other genre scenes, he gradually specialised as a drapery painter. Drapery painters were specialist painters who completed the dress, costumes and other accessories worn by the subjects of portrait paintings. They worked for portrait painters with a large clientele. He was recognised as one of
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he was about fifty years old at the time of his death and had spent more than 30 years in
England. Ramsay and Hudson were joint executors of van Aken's will. His younger brother, Alexander van Aken was also a drapery painter and was employed by Hudson after Joseph's death. Another brother,
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placed him on the same level as the portrait painters themselves. As Van Aken and his brother worked for a great many portrait painters Vertue observed that 'its very difficult to know one hand from another' (i.e. it was difficult to distinguish which portrait painter was responsible for a
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commented "As in
England almost everybody's picture is painted, so almost every painter's work is painted by Vanaken". As he was specialised in painting draperies for portrait painting, he was sometimes called 'the Tailor from Aken' (Aken being the Dutch translation for the German town
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as well as lesser figures also outside of London. The portrait painters would send the unfinished pictures to his London studio or painted the head on a separate piece of canvas so it could be pasted onto the costumed figure that he had painted. An example is the
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which relate to his collaborations with Hudson and Allan Ramsay. Van Aken's contributions helped popularise the Van Dyck costume amongst patrician sitters in the 1730s. The contributions of Van Aken were highly regarded by contemporaries and
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Very little is known about the early life of the artist. He is believed to have been born in
Antwerp around 1699. There is no record of his training in Antwerp and he was never registered as a pupil or master in the Antwerp
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from Bath sought to engage van Aken as a drapery painter, van Aken's other employers threatened to cease hiring him if he agreed to work for
Robinson. The same scenario played out when the portrait painter
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Van Aken was a member of the second St. Martin's Lane
Academy, an association of artists that gathered in the Slaughter's Coffee House in London between 1635 and 1666. Many artists were members including
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and to a lesser extent, portraits. He later became almost full time employed by portrait painters in
England as a drapery painter and only occasionally still produced genre works for his own account.
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Van Aken painted drapery for most of the leading artists in London as well as minor artists, also outside of London. Artists by whom he was engaged as drapery painter include
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in the
Flemish tradition. He used local English scenery in his genre works. He also painted portrait paintings. His works as an independent artist include a view of
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the foremost drapery painters active in mid-18th-century
England and was employed in that capacity by many leading and lesser known portrait painters of his time.
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Arnoldus, was also a painter known for small conversation pieces and a series of paintings of fish which were later engraved and published under the title
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M. Kirby Talley Jr., 'Thomas
Bardwell Of Bungay, Artist And Author 1704-1767'. The Volume of the Walpole Society Vol. 46 (1976-1978), pp. 91-163
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257:(1715, private collection). Upon his arrival in London he initially produced animated bourgeois interiors in subdued tonalities, such as
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Van Aken's participation in portraits in the 1730s and 1740s is evidenced by a series of drapery studies preserved in the
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His reputation was so great and the competition to ensure his services so fierce that when in 1745 the portrait painter
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Manners and Morals: Hogarth and
British Painting1700–1760 (Exhibition catalogue). London: Tate Gallery. 1987.
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Conversations and Chimneypieces: the imagery of the hearth in eighteenth-century English family portraiture
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and Thomas Hudson. The artists discussed ideas about art in their gatherings. In the 1730s the young
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played a role in the development of genre paintings into conversation pieces in 1720s England.
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who spent most of his career in England. Initially successful in England with his fashionable
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From 1735 onwards he worked as a drapery painter for many leading portrait painters such as
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307:(circa 1742 - 1749, National Trust, England) painted in collaboration with Thomas Hudson.
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In Antwerp van Aken painted genre scenes in the Flemish tradition such as the work the
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A lady and her maid buying vegetables, a young thief attempting to steal her watch
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likely worked in the workshop of van Aken. In 1748 he travelled to Paris with
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He arrived in London from Antwerp in around 1720, accompanied by his brother
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441:. Vol. 3. London: GG. and J. Robinson and J. Edwards. p. 449.
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His workshop was located in King Street, Seven Dials. He lived in
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Aken , Joseph van , (b ?Antwerp, c. 1699; d London, July 4, 1749)
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The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America
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British Conversation Pieces and Portraits of the 1700s
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Van Aken started out as a painter of genre scenes and
107:(1701–57), and possibly also an older brother called
111:(d.1735/6). He initially painted genre scenes and
512:at The National Gallery. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
500:The National Gallery. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
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439:The Works of Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford
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437:Walpole, Horatio (1798). "Joseph Vanaken".
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