Gaspard Dc Crayer, a Flemish painter, born in Antwerp in 1582, died in Ghent in 1669. He was the pupil of Raphael van Coxcie, but subsequently developed a style not unlike that of Rubens, with whom, as also with Vandyke, he was on terms of intimate friendship. He was appointed court painter at Brussels, but in the zenith of his fame he retired to Ghent. Commissions followed him thither from all parts of the country, and to the close of his life he was an almost incessant worker. Biblical subjects principally occupied him, and he also occasionally attempted with marked success history and allegory. In subjects demanding energy and grandeur of treatment, and in coloring, he falls below Rubens; but in quiet compositions he often equals him. In freedom and mastery of touch he rivals his great model, and in respect to the qualities which combine to form a historical painter he probably approached nearer to him than any of his countrymen. That he has not occupied this place in popular estimation is partly owing to the inferior class of work which he produced in his later years. His pictures are very numerous.

Among the best are a "Virgin and Child adored by Saints," in the Louvre; the "Miraculous Draught of Fishes" and the " Assumption of St. Catharine," in the Brussels gallery; the "Judgment of Solomon," in the Ghent gallery; the."Virgin and Child," in the Pina-kothek, Munich; and the "Virgin and Child, enthroned and adored by Saints," in the Belvedere, Vienna. The Metropolitan museum of art of New York possesses a fine example of Crayer in a picture, 10 ft. 8 in. in height by 15 ft. 8 in. in width, representing the meeting between Alexander and Diogenes.