Mechelen 1534 – Amsterdam 1593

In the years after the Calvinists gained control of Amsterdam, the city experienced an economic recovery and renewed interest in the arts. For this reason, numerous painters from the southern provinces of the Netherlands (present-day Belgium) fleeing the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants, chose to settle in Amsterdam rather than Antwerp. They thus contributed to a renewal of landscape painting which reached an apogee in the seventeenth century. Among these Flemish emigre artists, Conninxloo, Vinckboons and Hans Bol were the first to settle in the Dutch metropolis.
Born in Mechelen, Hans Bol was a student of his two uncles, Jean and Jacques Bol. He is registered as a member of the Mechelen Guild in 1560. Following the sacking of his city in 1572, he moved to Antwerp where he gained citizenship. However, as again in the war caught up with him there in 1584, he began a series of travels that took him successively to Bergen-op-Zoom, Dordrecht and Delft. He would only settle definitively in Amsterdam in 1586.
Hans Bol achieved fame above all for his landscapes with broad panoramic views, populated by many small figures recalling the style of Pieter Bruegel the Elder whose paintings Bol was largely responsible for popularizing in the Netherlands, thus influencing an entire generation of Dutch painters.
His students included Jacob Savery of Kortrijk and Frans Boels.