Jan van kessel biography of williams

Jan van Kessel I was a Flemish Old Masters painter who was born in 1626. Numerous key galleries and museums such as State Hermitage Museum have featured Jan van Kessel I's work in the past.Jan van Kessel I's work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from 230 USD to 1,220,057 USD, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. Since 1998 the record price for this artist at auction is 1,220,057 USD for A still life of tulips, a crown imperial, snowdrops, lilies, irises, roses and other flowers in a glass vase with a lizard, butterflies, a dragonfly and other insects, sold at Bonhams New Bond Street in 2010. Jan van Kessel I has been featured in articles for The Globe and Mail and Museums + Heritage Advisor. The most recent article is A Study in Anguish Preserved in Nazi-Looted Art written for The Globe and Mail in February 2021. The artist died in 1679.

Artist's alternative names: Jan van Kessel the Elder

Garnering illustrative skill from his father’s works, Ferdinand inherited Jan’s meticulously crafted models of myriad flora and fauna. While Ferdinand’s “views” differ formally from those of his father, some include strikingly similar elements. Place their scenes for “Amsterdam” side by side and you will see the same pair of hares, a brown one leaping forth from its burrow, as its pale companion stalls. Elsewhere, as if recognizing his debts, Ferdinand forms an autograph out of insects, the way his father had in the central panel for Europe. When their landscapes approach remote climes, however, the Van Kessels’ painted creatures become increasingly strange, as observational accuracy decays into the exotic imaginary. “These fascinating pieces”, writes the art critic Saim Demircan, “reveal an undulating representation of angst. . . namely that of the unknown”. In a landscape from Jan van Kessel’s America, for example, muscular mermen with azul and yellow hair sit in conversation by the beach, alongside a fish that resembles a rotorcraft, thanks to a headdress of squid limbs. These same characters can be seen in Ferdinand van Kessel’s depiction of Luanda, Angola. Not only had neither artist actually observed these animals, but — at a distance from Europe — Africa and America b

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