Flemish painter, active in Spain.
Child and student of
Kessel the Elder, Jan van (Flemish painter, 1626-1679)
Jan van Kessel was the last member of a dynasty of painters which originated in
the 16th century, all of whose members shared the same name. He was born in 1654
in Antwerp where his father, Jan van Kessel "the Elder" (1626-1679), a relative
of the Bruegel family, specialised in painting animals, landscapes and flowers,
and it was in this environment that the young artist received his early
training. He arrived when still young in Madrid at the end of the 1670s, perhaps
just before he painted the family portrait in a garden setting of the Flemish
noble who was to be his protector during his early years at court and perhaps
also facilitated his move from his native country. This Family Portrait of 1679,
a typical subject in the Low Countries but not favoured by Spanish taste of the
period, is now in the Prado. Van Kessel was painter to Queen Maria Luisa of
Orléans and also to the King's second wife, Mariana of Neuberg. Following the
death of Charles II, the artist accompanied the King's widow during her stay in
Toledo, later returning to court, where he died in 1708. During the last years
of his life he portrayed the young Philip V, although apparently with little
success.
Very little work by Jan van Kessel III is known. In addition to his Family
Portrait in the Prado, mentioned above, there is another painting on this
subject in the Warsaw Museum, and an important portrait of dwarves with a dog in
the Poznan Museum which reveals the artist's assimilation of the tradition of
Velázquez which prevailed in Madrid court painting of the late 17th century.
According to Spanish sources of the period, particularly Palomino, who knew and
dealt with him, Van Kessel was a painter of great technical merit, and highly
gifted in portraiture, the genre to which he mainly dedicated his activities,
although Palomino also states that he took part in the decoration of the Galería
del Cierzo in the Queen's apartments in the Alcázar in Madrid, painting two
episodes from the fable of Cupid and Psyche.
Trained in the Low Countries, Van Kessel's style reveals a painstaking and
detailed technique characteristic of Flemish painting, having little in common
with the loose brushstroke and free handling of Madrid painting of his time,
although he clearly derives the warm palette and importance of light in spatial
definition from this school. Trinidad de Antonio
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