Jan van Kessel (1641,

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

– 1680,

) was a Dutch Golden Age draftsman and landscape painter who made many cityscapes of

. His work is often confused with the works of contemporary painters with the same name.

Biography

According to Houbraken he was born in Amsterdam in 1648 and made clever farm scenes that he first drew from life before making his oil paintings.Jan van Kessel Biography
in ''De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen'' (1718) by Arnold Houbraken, courtesy of the

Digital library for Dutch literature The Digital Library for Dutch Literature (Dutch: Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren or DBNL) is a website (showing the abbreviation as dbnl) about Dutch language and Dutch literature. It contains thousands of literary texts, second ...

Houbraken went on to mention that he was best known for his winter scenes and died in 1698. Houbraken couldn't discover whether he was related to the Jan van Kessel of Antwerp, who was mentioned in

Cornelis de Bie Cornelis de Bie (10 February 1627 – ) was a Flemish ''rederijker'', poet, jurist and minor politician from Lier. He is the author of about 64 works, mostly comedies. He is known internationally today for his biographical sketches of Flemish a ...

's book Het Gulden Cabinet. According to the RKD he was the son of the framemaker Thomas Jacobsz van Kessel, and the pupil of the landscape painter

Jacob van Ruisdael Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael (; 1629 – 10 March 1682) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He is generally considered the pre-eminent landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, a period of great wealth and cultural ach ...

in Amsterdam.Jan van Kessel (1641-1680)
in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

He is known for cityscapes, beach scenes, winter landscapes and architectural works. Many of his works are similar to those of van Ruisdael and have been taken as his, sometimes after faked signatures were added. Slive, Seymour, ''Dutch Painting, 1600–1800'', p. 205, Yale UP, 1995,

References

Jan Kessel
on Artnet {{DEFAULTSORT:Kessel (Amsterdam), Jan van 1641 births 1680 deaths Dutch Golden Age painters Dutch male painters Painters from Amsterdam