Jan van Kessel III
1654 - 1708
A Still Life of Fish with Vegetables resting on a Stone Ledge and A Still Life of Fruit with a Guinea Pig and Star Tortoise
Medium:
Oil on Copper
Category:
Dimensions:
16(h) x 21(w) cms
Framed Dimensions:
27(h) x 32(w) cms
Essay:
Jan van Kessel III 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 Brueghel 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.
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. However he clearly derives the warm palette and importance of light in spatial definition from his time spent in Spain.
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Many of the objects contained within this pair of still lifes can be traced to other paintings from the Kessel family. For instance, a tortoise also at the bottom right of a composition and in the same pose appears in still lifes by both van Kessel I and II. The tortoise, and indeed the composition of this work as a whole, is closely related to a picture of almost identical dimensions by Jan van Kessel II (see K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz, Die Maler Jan van Kessel, 2012, Lingen, p. 436, no. 134).
The other picture in this pair shows a plate of fish, the cat, and the leaping dog which are all common elements. However, the copper pot tilted on its side appears to be a rarer feature and might be unique in the oeuvre of the various Kessels.
Provenance:
Private Collection, Spain