Flemish painter and draughtsman, active in France. His first surviving painting is the Winter Landscape (1617; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum), a work in the manner of Jan Breughel the Elder, who may have been his master. However, a drawing of a River Scene (Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen), containing references to such Dutch landscape masters as Willem Buytewech and Esaias van de Velde, suggests that he may have trained in Holland. In 1614 he became a master in the artists' guild in Antwerp and in 1616 in that of Brussels. Soon afterwards he was in Heidelberg, working for Frederick V, the Elector Palatine. The artist settled in Paris in 1621 when Rubens was painting the Luxembourg Gallery for Marie de Médicis, and is famous for the decorative programme that Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu commissioned him to paint, including views of French cities to be placed between the windows of the recently completed Grande Galerie of the Louvre. //