Jan van Rymsdyk

His brothers Hendrik and Pieter were also painters, though neither achieved as much renown. Jan was a major influence on engravers such as Joseph Jacobs and his student Rogier van der Weyden. He is now best known as an anatomic illustrator for his original drawings for three major atlases of normal and abnormal pregnancy published in the mid eighteenth century in London.

The recorded working language is Dutch. Places of work recorded in the authority are The Hague, London and Bristol. Work by Jan van Rymsdyk is recorded in the collections of Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fries Museum, National Museum Paleis het Loo, Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery and Hunterian Museum.

Rymsdyk was active The Hague in the late 1740s but was in London by 1750. In 1758 he moved away to Bristol and practised as a portrait-painter; in 1764 he returned to London.

• Illustration — Plate VI of The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774) by William Hunter, engraving by Jan van Rymsdyk In 1767 Rymsdyk executed a mezzotint engraving of Frederick Henry and Emilia Van Solms, Prince and Princess of Orange, from a painting by Jacob Jordaens at Devonshire House. His skill brought him work with William Hunter, and he executed some of the engravings for Hunter's Anatomia Humani Gravidi Uteri (1774). In 1778, with his son Andrew, he published a series of plates from antiquities and curiosities in the British Museum, Museum Britannicum (second, revised edition 1791).

His son, Andreas van Rymsdyk, gained a medal at the Society of Arts in 1767, and in 1778 exhibited two enamels at the Royal Academy. He assisted his father in his works, and died at Bath in 1786.