Jan van Kessel (Antwerp c.1620-?1661 ?)

First introduced by de Maere and Wabbes in 1994, a small body of works, mostly still lifes, form the oeuvre of ‘the other’ Jan van Kessel, who was active throughout the 1650s (see K. Ertz and C. Nietze-Ertz, Die Maler Jan van Kessel, Lingen, 2012, pp. 9, 26-27, 144-147 and 463-94, nos. 1-35). He became a master in Antwerp in the same year as Jan van Kessel I and must subsequently have moved to Amsterdam, where he is recorded in 1649. Ertz considers ‘the other’ van Kessel by no means inferior, and even believes him to eclipse his namesake in his masterpiece A garland of fruit with a cockatoo in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs and for noting the stylistic similarities to a painting, also dated 1655 (Brno, Moravska Galerie).