RYSBRACK, Flemish family of artists, active in England

Pieter Rysbrack (1655–1729) was a landscape painter and draughtsman who worked in England (from c. 1675) and Paris (c. 1684–88) before returning to his native Antwerp. Three of his children — four if the painter Ludovicus Rysbrack (active early 18th century) was, as he is thought to have been, Pieter's son — became painters: Pieter Andreas Rysbrack; Jacob Rysbrack (1685–1765); and Gerard Rysbrack (1696–1773). The best known of Pieter's sons, however, was the sculptor Michael Rysbrack, who settled in England with his brother Pieter Andreas c. 1720, both of them remaining there for the rest of their lives. Michael became, with his younger rival Roubiliac, the foremost monumental, architectural and portrait sculptor active there in the first half of the 18th century. With his lively and eclectic style, drawing on both Classical and Baroque sources, and his skills as a modeller and carver, Michael Rysbrack revolutionized the practice of sculpture in England, raising it to a level that could stand comparison with sculpture on the Continent.