Mathys Schoevaerdts became a student of the landscape painter Adam Frans Boudewijns in Brussels in 1682. From 1692 he experienced the culmination of his artistic career and was promoted to the position of dean of the St. Luke painters' guild in Brussels. His decked out cityscapes and landscapes are still entirely under the influence of his great role model, Jan Brueghel the Elder.

"As one of the few Flemish artists who could paint both landscapes and figures, he was asked by Jacques d'Arthois or his teacher Baudewyns, for example, to paint figures as staffage in their landscape (...)". (cf. report by Dr. Ertz) He preferred to depict simple figures in genre-like scenes that are embedded in a landscape that stretches far into the dept...