Background
Jacob de Wit was born in Amsterdam, and became famous for his door and ceiling paintings.
Jacob de Wit was born in Amsterdam, and became famous for his door and ceiling paintings.
He lived on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, and many of the buildings on the Keizersgracht still have door or ceiling paintings done by him. Since many of the families who lived in Amsterdam in those days had country villas, de Wit also painted in houses in the fashionable areas of Haarlem and the Vecht river. While in Antwerp, he made a series of watercolor sketches of the Rubens ceilings in the Carolus Borromeuskerk in Antwerp.
After the church was struck by lightning in 1718 these became a historical document, and his pupil January Punt later engraved his sketches and published them in 1751.
Jacob de Wit died in Amsterdam in 1754. One of his paintings for a door in Heemstede now hangs in Uppsala, Sweden, in the Linnaeus museum.
A set of paintings of the four seasons depicting cherubs painted in a three-dimensional monochrome style now hangs at Hinton Ampner house in Hampshire. Another of his three-dimensional monochrome style cherub paintings hangs in Kingston Lacy house in Dorset.
Old City Hall (The Hague)
Museum Willet-Holthuysen.
Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke]
According to the RKD he was the pupil of Albert van Spiers in Amsterdam and Jacob van Hal in Antwerp where he became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1714.