Ferdinand van Kessel
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Ferdinand van Kessel (1648 – 1696), was a Flemish Baroque painter.
Biography
He was born in Antwerp as the son of Jan van Kessel the Elder. He is known for landscapes, still lifes, and genre pieces with monkeys. He moved to Breda where he became the teacher of Jacob Campo Weyerman and Louis de Moni.
According to Weyerman his father was well known in his own day and only tipped his hat to Jan Brueghel the Elder, who was the "Phoenix of landscape paintings with animals and birds". Though Ferdinand never achieved the level of his father, he was true to the Kessel-Brueghel family name, and after Jan Brueghel the Younger died he was the only painter in Antwerp left who carried on the family tradition. He was discovered by Mr. Molo, a representative of Polish king John III Sobieski who sent a few of his cabinet pieces to Poland. When these were well received, he then invited Kessel to come to Breda to make enough paintings to decorate a whole room in the Wilanów Palace. Kessel subsequently moved to Breda to fulfill this commission according to the taste of the Polish King, which he began by painting scenes of the four elements on a sheet of copper three by four and a half feet wide. The four elements were each represented by cherubs, and the first painting was of a boy seated on an eagle representing Air, surrounded by birds. Earth was a boy resting his arm on the back of a lion, surrounded by herbs, fruits and flowers. Fire was a boy surveying implements of war, with gold and silver inlaid harness, drums, embroidered silk banners and spears with damask coverlets, with a small monkey smoking a pipe and drinking a glass of rossoly (rosée du soleil). Water was a boy leaning on a crock symbolizing God's water source at the edge of a river surrounded with sea and river fish in the water, and pearls, corals and shells on shore. The whole was framed in ebony with a gold edging and surrounded by fourteen or fifteen symbols of the elements.
This work was so well received, that Kessel made another series of the four continents for the King of Poland, and continued to make paintings for him from his home in Breda, refusing an invitation to the Polish court. When a a fire damaged his paintings in Poland, he quickly offered to repaint the lost pieces from sketches he had made. He continued to fulfill commissions from Poland on his own and subcontracting other Antwerp painters (Historical allegories: Ykens, Maas, Opstal, Biset; Landscapes: Spierings, Rysbregts, den Antwerpse vande Velde, Genoels; Flowers: Verbruggen, Bosschaarts, Hardimé, and Gillemans), until one day when he completed an allegory of Reynaart den Vos in 1696, whereupon his patron Mr. Molo refused to pay because the King had died.
He also made a ceiling piece in the court at Breda for William III of England.
He died in Breda.
