BUGS - insects and other bits by Jan van Kessel the Elder, 1650-1664

 

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Detail of above.

There are several paintings by Van Kessel that have had a false signature by Jan Brueghel the Younger added. Three details follow.

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Jan van Kessel the Elder (baptized 5 April 1626, Antwerp - 17 April 1679, Antwerp), Flemish painter. A versatile artist, his output was broad, including landscapes, genre scenes, allegories, marine paintings, studies of insects, and floral still-lifes. A member of the extended Brueghel family, many of his subjects took inspiration of the work of his grandfather Jan Brueghel the Elder as well as from the earlier generation of Flemish painters. His father and van Kessel grandfather were also artists. At the age of only nine, he was sent to study with the history painter Simon de Vos. He further trained with family members who were artists, including his father and his uncle Jan Brueghel the Younger. In 1644 he became a member of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke where he was recorded as a blomschilder (flower painter). At the age of twenty he married; the couple had thirteen children of whom two, Jan and Ferdinand, would be trained by him and become successful painters, themselves. He was a success financially as his work commanded high prices and was widely collected at home and throughout Europe. But by the time his wife died in 1678 his fortune seems to have turned for the worse, and the following year he had to mortgage his house. He was now too ill to paint and he died that same year at the age of fifty-three.