FRANCKEN, January Baptist, the son of Sebastiaen Francken, was born at Antwerp in 1599. He received his first instruction from his father, and for some time followed his style, which he afterwards improved by an attentive study of the works of Rubens and Van Dyck.
The confusion was created by the many painters named Francken, some poor attributions, and a portrait by Anthony van Dyck of a certain Johannes Baptist Franck, aged 32, of whom nothing more is known. In art histories from the 18th and 19th century like Michael Bryan"s Bryan"s dictionary of painters and engravers (1886) he received a lengthy lemma:
His first efforts were historical subjects. But he adopted a mode of representing the interiors of saloons and galleries, embellished with pictures and statues, &c., with gallant assemblies of figures and conversations.
They were greatly sought after, and were placed in the choicest collections.
He possessed a talent of imitating so exactly the peculiar touch and style of each master in the small pictures he introduced into his galleries, that it was easy to point out the original painter. lieutenant was the possession of this talent that induced so many contemporary artists to solicit his assistance to decorate their pictures with small figures, both in landscapes and interiors.
Many of Pieter Neefils"s are so ornamented. He died in 1653. Pictures by him of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist are at Augsburg and Brussels, and at Bruges there is a picture of Christ among the Doctors.
Other dictionaries and encyclopedias which included him were e.g.
Friedrich Müller"s Die Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker (1860) and Jean-Baptiste Descamps" Louisiana Vie des Peintres Flamands (1754) (as "Jean-Baptiste Franck"). Théodore Lejeune"s Guide théorique et pratique de l"amateur de tableaux even said that he was "considéré comme le meilleur peintre de la famille", id est (that is) "considered to be the best painter of the family".
Already in the 1857-1864 work by Christiaan Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters, van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, doubts were formulated about the biographical details given about this painter, which didn"t match the dates given for some of his works, or the age given on the Van Dyck painting.
Recent books or sites on the Francken family no longer list January Baptist Francken.
He is sometimes said to be the same as Hans Francken (born in 1581), another obscure member of the same family. Paintings earlier attributed to January Baptist Francken have now been reattributed to other painters, sometimes members of the Francken family, sometimes others like Louis de Caullery.
