Megan(ck) Renier (1637 - 1690)

Reinier Megan(ck) (1637 Brussels – 1690 Vienna) The parents of Reinier Megan(ck), who was baptised in Brussels on 14 September 1637, were Antoni Megan and Magdalena Grimbergen; his teacher from 1656 was the painter, architect and engineer Leo van Heil (b 1605 in Brussels). According to Austrian art critic Alfred von Wurzbach, "a painter named Jan Megang" was active in Antwerp in 1661. The RKD [Netherlands Institute for Art History] has him in 1661 as a guild member in Ghent, where he remained until 1669. Chronologically, this is not consistent with the time he spent in Kroměříž, where in 1668/9, together with a certain "Kegel", he executed a series of landscape lunettes for the archiepiscopal palace. In Vienna from 1670 onwards, Megan(ck) is variously documented as godfather and as witness to a will and to a marriage, and as art dealer to Prince Karl Eusebius I of Liechtenstein (1611–1684). He was presumably employed for some time in the workshop of Hans de Jodes (1630 – after 1662), whose works are stylistically similar to his own, and whose estate he evidently managed. Megan(ck) worked primarily as a landscape painter, but etchings and three signed still lifes are known to exist. Through his Flemish origins and his work in Vienna, he provides a link between Dutch and Austrian baroque landscape painting.

Author: Ducke Astrid

Literature: Translated catalogue text from (Translation: Gail Schamberger MA, Salzburg): Habersatter, Ducke Astrid (Hrsg.): Natur wird Bild. Österreichische Barocklandschaften. Residenzgalerie Salzburg. Salzburg 2021, S. 258