Provenance:
Private collection
In Paris and the northern provinces, painting flowers on vellum developed simultaneously with the increase in botanical collections, during the first decade of...
read moreProvenance:
Private collection
In Paris and the northern provinces, painting flowers on vellum developed simultaneously with the increase in botanical collections, during the first decade of the 17th century. The taste for the living natural world, which lasted throughout the this century, is closely related to the development of floral painting. With the vogue in botanical collections and the art of the garden, towns increased their green spaces. Cultivating natural flowers was also a real passion: in his book Les Caractères, La Bruyère paints the portrait of a tulip-lover. In cabinets, however, botanical collections took the form of books and practice: there were herbariums and compendiums containing naturalist plates. The Daniel Rabel collection, currently kept in the engravings room in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, is one of the most remarkable: having belonged to Mazarin, it includes no less than one hundred plates featuring flowers. These numerous plates were often engraved and circulated among painters, as well as embroiderers, goldsmiths and silversmiths in France and abroad.
Enjoyed by his contemporaries for their trompe-l’oeil quality, many of Jan van Kessel’s works were intended to decorate these spaces reserved for art-lovers. These collectors created cabinets of paintings which contained numerous still lifes and plates such as this Study of butterflies, bees and beetles, with a branch of cherry blossom and borage painted by Jan van Kessel. A delicate cherry-tree branch lies at the centre of the composition; small, crawling insects and majestic butterflies gravitate around it. Borage flowers complete the plant assortment.
A baroque contemporary of Rubens, Jan van Kessel’s work is closer to the Ghent-Bruges school and its miniaturists active during the Renaissance of the Netherlands and Northern Europe. Joris Hoefnagel and Georg Flegel created fabulous paintings depicting perfectly identifiable beetles, moths and butterflies. The insects, shells and flowerets seem to be larger than in real life, revealing the use of a magnifying instrument: the microscope, a Dutch invention, was a determining factor in the progress of these naturalist artists, just as it was for zoologists.
Similar to the painting in the Getty , the objects are arranged in a refined manner and painted in sparkling colours. Just like Joris Hoefnagel , Jan van Kessel retains the light, neutral vellum background. Like copper, it renders the insects and flowers more luminous, making it a truly living study. The light conveys each element in an analytical manner, and thus creates subtle and delicate shadows. The freedom he uses in his arrangement of these insects and shells distinguishes him from Hoefnagel, who uses symmetry as the architecture for his studies. His well-organised layout is therefore more like that of Georg Flegel.
Here, Jan van Kessel shows all his personality and his desire to give an artistic and original character to his studies. Other studies of insects by Kessel can also be seen in the Folkwang Museum in Essen, the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg . Greatly enjoyed and highly sought-after during his lifetime, Jan van Kessel’s studies of flowers and insects were immensely popular. This is also true today: just as this delicate and exotic Study of butterflies, bees and beetles, with a branch of cherry blossom and borage attracted 17th century collectors, its realism and poetry will appeal to today’s art-lovers.
1626 - Antwerp - 1679
The grandson of the "Velvet" Brueghel on his mother’s side, and the nephew of both Jan Brueghel the Younger and David Teniers, Jan van Kessel was influenced more by his grandfather and his uncle than by his apprenticeship to Simon de Vos.
He specialised in painting animals, birds, amphibians and insects, which he included notably in representations of the Four Elements, the Four Corners of the Earth, (Museums of Cambridge, Madrid, Prague, and Strasbourg), allegories, and fables as well as very small-scale gallery scenes. Jan van Kessel was also one of the most brillant floral painters of the century. His roses often pink in colour, and his tulips are finely detailed and arranged in airy bouquets. This finesse in handling detail is also seen in his still lives of fruit and in the objects included in them such as dishes, baskets, and vases. The charm of his compositions, and their exquisite and precise rendering, together with the rich and dazzling hues of his palette have made Jan van Kessel one of the most appealing and highly-regarded of the Flemish masters.
