Background
Du Bois was the youngest son of Hendrick Du Bois, and his wife Helena Leonora Sieveri.
Du Bois was the youngest son of Hendrick Du Bois, and his wife Helena Leonora Sieveri.
Born at Antwerp, the family lived in Rotterdam by 1643, where Hendrick was described as a painter and dealer in works of art and where he died in 1647. From 1646 to 1653 Dubois lived in Haarlem, where he was a pupil of Van Berchem and Wouwermans, and took to painting horses and cattle pictures. In 1653 he traveled with his 13-year older brother Eduard (1619-1696).
Here Simon began his career as a painter of small battle-pieces in the Italian fashion.
In 1657 he was active in Venice, in 1661 he was back in Rotterdam, but in 1667 he was paid for a portrait he painted in Rome of Alexander VII. He had a curious neat way of finishing his figures, which he also employed in portrait-painting. According to Vertue he was induced to turn his hand to this by the advice of a lady friend.
James Elsum wrote an epigram on this portrait of the lord chancellor. These portraits by Vandyck were noted by Gustav Waagen as being in the collection of the Earl of Hardwicke at Wimpole Hall, and were engraved by Cornelis Visscher.
He was a "history and landskip painter", according to Vertue, born at Antwerp, and "disciple to one Groenwegen, a landskip painter likewise".
He also worked some time in Paris, and on his way to Italy executed some works for Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy.