“Capriccio of a Seaport”

Tobias Verhaecht was born in Antwerp as the son of Cornelis van Haecht. His father must also have been an artist as Verhaecht was admitted to the Antwerp Guild of St Luke as the son of a master.

It is not recorded with whom he studied. Before 1590 he travelled to Italy and first worked in Florence where Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany was his patron.

He then moved on to Rome where he was active as a painter of landscape frescos. In 1590-1591 he returned to Antwerp where he became a master of the Guild of St. Luke.

Not long after he married Suzanna van Mockenborch, who was the granddaughter of Peter Paul Rubens' stepfather Jan de Landmetere, and a cousin of his mother.

The couple had two sons Cornelis and Willem and one daughter Suzanna. His wife died in 1595 after the birth of their daughter. This happened during a difficult financial period for Verhaecht when he had also been appointed deacon of the Guild.

The year following the death of his first wife, he married Esther Pamphi, whose sister Maria married the battle painter Sebastiaen Vrancx. The couple had one more son and daughter.

His second wife died in 1612. Verhaecht suffered more family drama with the death of his first-born Cornelis in 1614 and of his daughter Suzanna in 1623.

Verhaecht was a member of the Violieren, a local Chamber of rhetoric connected to the Antwerp Guild of St Luke for which he wrote a comedy in 1620.

He was the first teacher of Rubens who studied with him around 1592 for about two years but left because his interest was history painting and not landscape. His other pupils included his son Willem van Haecht, Jacques Backereel, Marten Ryckaert, Geeraert van Beemel, Adriaen Daep, Leonhard Cemp, Cornelis Bol, Pieter van den Hoeck and Abraham Matthys.

The artist died in Antwerp in 1631.[6]