Jan van Kessel d.ä.

Variant namesauktoriserad namnform: Jan van Kessel d.ä.

DatesBiographical dates: 1626 - 1679 Dead: dead 1679 Born: born 1626

Gender

Nationality

BiographyBiography: Still life and animal painter. The son of the Antwerp portrait painter Hieronymus van Kessel II, a collaborator of Jan Brueghel I, whose daughter, Paschasia, he married. Jan I was a pupil of his father and later, most likely, of his uncle, Jan Breughel II. He enrolled as a master in the Antwerp painters’ Guild of St. Luke in c. 1644/1645 and was described in the guild records as a “flower painter” (“bloemschilder”). At his marriage in 1647 to Maria van Apshoven, one of the witnesses was his uncle David Teniers II, who had married Jan I Brueghel’s daughter Anna ten years earlier. In 1646 his uncle, Jan Brueghel II, sold two copies of his own small flower garlands commissioned from Van Kessel. Two of his sons, Ferdinand I, who inherited his father’s workshop in 1679, and Jan II, became painters. After a successful career, Van Kessel nevertheless died at Antwerp in relative poverty. His identity has often been mistaken in the past for that of his namesake, a little known painter of fruit- and game still lifes, who was admitted to the Antwerp Guild in the same year (1644/1645). Van Kessel was a highly versatile and prolific painter whose subjects included animals (mostly birds, fish and insects), still lifes of fruits, vegetables, game, or decorative objects, flower pieces and garlands, frequently produced in collaboration with other artists, and picture-gallery interiors. He also designed cartoons for floral borders of tapestries. Dated works range from 1648 to 1676 and are predominantly small-scale works on copper or wood panel, brilliantly coloured and executed with miniature- like detail. Van Kessel’s many detailed sketches of insects and plants exhibit an almost scientific precision reminiscent of similar studies by Joris Hoefnagel. Beside these little studies, for which he is best known today, from about 1652 onwards, Van Kessel also painted cabinet pieces with live animals in landscapes, mostly in large series and usually as composite paintings grouped around a larger centerpiece and framed. These paintings, which included allegorical representations of the “Five Senses”, the “Four Elements”, or the “Four Parts of the World”, are strongly indebted to Jan Brueghel I, although Van Kessel often shows himself to be an innovator of the genre. Daniel Seghers has been pointed out as a major influence on his floral festoons and garlands. During the course of his career, notably towards the 1670s, his handling became more painterly and less refined.

External links