Joseph Van Aken

About Joseph Van Aken

Josef van Aken, known in England as Joseph van Aken and Joseph Van Aken of Heacken was a Flemish genre, portrait and drapery painter who spent most of his career in England. Initially successful in England with his fashionable conversation pieces and other genre scenes, he gradually specialised as a drapery painter. Drapery painters were specialist painters who completed the dress, costumes and other accessories worn by the subjects of portrait paintings. They worked for portrait painters with a large clientele. He was recognised as one of the foremost drapery painters active in mid-18th-century England and was employed in that capacity by many leading and lesser known portrait painters of his time.

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In museum collections

• Winter, 1720
  Philadelphia Museum of Art · Public domain
• An English Family at Tea, 1720
  National Gallery · Public domain
• Lady Lucy Manners, Duchess of Montrose (1717 – 1788), 1745
  National Trust · Public domain
• The Three Sons of Sir Henry Harpur 5th Bt:John Harpur (1734/5 – 1745); Henry Harpur later Sir Henry ‘Harry’ Harpur, 6th Bt (1739-1789) and Charles Harpur, later Major Charles Harpur (1741 – 1770) (style of Van Dyck), 1745
  National Trust · Public domain

All 8 open-access museum images →