Gerard, a celebrated Flemish painter, was born at Liege in 1640. He learned his art from his father, himself a painter of some note, and at the age of fifteen received commissions both for portraits and historical pieces from the Electors of Cologne and Brandenburg. He painted with great rapidity, and earned large sums of money, but extravagance and dissipation ran away with his gains, and he retired to Utrecht. While living there in great poverty, two of his pictures fell into the hands of Gerard Vylemburg, a famous dealer of Amsterdam. By his advice Lairese removed to that city, and his paintings always found there a ready and lucrative sale. At the age of fifty he had the misfortune to lose his eye-sight, and he then began to lecture on the principles of drawing and painting to the artists and students who crowded to hear him. After his death, which took place in 1711, in his seventy-second year, the notes of these lectures were redacted by the Society of Painters at Amsterdam into that famous treatise on the art of painting which passes under his name. Lairese's drawing is marked by grace and ease. His colouring, deficient perhaps in vigour, is correct, natural, and well-blended. He excelled in subjects drawn from the ancient mythology, especially bacchanalian scenes. These enabled him to display his knowledge of classic costume and architecture, in which he was deeply learned.