snyders

Esaias Boursse (March 3, 1631 November 16, 1672), was a Dutch painter. His paintings were mainly genre works of quite good quality:

(Esaias Boursse, An old woman doing needlework, c. 1655/60, Institut Néerlandais, Frits Lugt Collection, Paris )

(Esaias Boursse, 1656, Wallace collection, P166)

"We know nothing more about the education of Esaias Boursse, other than the fact that he travelled to Italy in about 1650 to study the great Renaissance examples. No reminders of those examples is to be found in his work. In the past art historians have tried to place him among Rembrandt's pupils. There is no objective evidence at all to prove this though. Maybe this opinion has been inspired by the fact that the painters were neighbours in the Sint Antoniebreestraat in Amsterdam.

Boursse's financial position will not have been good, since in 1661 he sailed with the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, on the ship Amersfoort. It travelled to Ceylon (nowadays called Sri Lanka). Boursse drew the inhabitants, landscapes and city views, which have been preserved in an album which can be found in the print room of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. In 1663, the painter was back in Amsterdam.

In 1672, Boursse sailed with Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie again. On November 16 he died at sea, on board the ship Rhenen." (from wiki)

The Ceylon album was bought in 1996 at auction by Rijksmuseum: "In 1996 an album containing 116 drawings came to light, most of them made by Boursse during his time in Ceylon; he made only a small number during his outward or return journeys to the Cape of Good Hope. The drawings are completely different from his earlier known oeuvre of genre paintings and prints with religious themes." (from [1])

The strange thing is that sketches from his album look like a work of an amature artist, which is hard to believe for a fijnschilder who studied in Italy.