Italianate Landscape with a Round Tower on a City Wall

Adriaen van der Kabel (Rijswijk 1630/31 - Lyon 1705)

His estimated birthdate is based on his stated age of thirty-four on a drawn Self-portrait, dated 1664, in the Albertina, Vienna (inv. no. 9995).¹ His parents were Cornelis Jansz van der Kabel (van der Touw) (?-?) and Maertgen (Maritgen) Philipsdr (?-?). He had a younger brother, Engel (Ange) van der Kabel (1641-1695), who was active as a painter, apparently of fruit still lifes.²

Adriaen’s apprenticeship in The Hague under Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) around 1644-48 is supported by a drawing in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. no. 21987),³ thought to be a copy of about that date after a lost original by Van Goyen. Van der Kabel’s earliest dated work is a painted River Landscape with a Tower of 1648 in the style of Van Goyen, whose present whereabouts are unknown.⁴ After his apprenticeship, Van der Kabel stayed in The Hague, where he worked in the studio of the portrait painter Anthonie van Ravensteyn (c. 1580-1669). His last record in The Hague is from 23 August 1654.⁵ Apparently, Adriaen led a disorderly life – Weyerman called him a ‘loose cannon’ (‘losse kabouter’) – inclined to drinking and fighting, confirmed by numerous documentary references to incidents in which he was accused of such misconduct.

By 1655, Van der Kabel had left The Hague. He must have travelled to Italy via France, visiting Paris and staying in Lyon until c. 1658.⁶ He is documented in Rome only from 1662, but had arrived there already in 1660. On his way, he probably passed through Genoa, whose harbour is represented in a painting in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (inv. no. BHC0754). In Rome, he lived in the Strada della Croce. Like many fellow Dutchmen, he joined the Bentvueghels (the confraternity of Northern artists in Rome), his bent-name being ‘Geestigheid’ (‘Wit’). His younger brother Engel, who accompanied him to Rome, was nicknamed ‘Corydon’ (‘Pastoral shepherd?’). On 20 August 1665, while still in Rome, Adriaen was arrested for misuse of rapier, together with the Flemish artist Jan Baptist de Wael (1636-1697).⁷ On this occasion, he stated that he had been in Rome for about five years. While in Italy, he painted staffage for the landscape painter Viviano Codazzi (c. 1604-1670).

Van der Kabel left Italy together with his brother circa 1666. On 7 August 1667, he married Suzanne Bourgois (?-1677) in Lyon, where he remained for the rest of his career. Of their five children – all baptized as Catholics – only two reached adulthood, one of whom was Marcantoine (Antoine) van der Kabel (?-1708), who followed in his father’s footsteps as a painter. In Lyon, Van der Kabel joined the local painter’s guild, where he was recorded as Maître-garde in 1670, 1673 and 1686.⁸ Many of his circa sixty surviving paintings – depicting Italianate or Arcadian landscapes, harbour scenes, marines, as well as still-lifes, genre scenes and religious subjects – are preserved in French museums. In Lyon, he provided decorative paintings for the town houses of leading families, such as Pilata, De Pizey (c. 1691) and Neufville de Villeroy. Virtually all of his fifty-five etchings were published in Paris.

As an artist, Adriaen was influenced by such Dutch Italianates as Nicolaes Berchem (1621/22-1683) and Jacob van der Does (1623-1673), as well as by Italian and French masters, among others by Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675), Pier Francesco Mola (1612-1666) and Salvator Rosa (1615-1673). Eventually, his Dutch instincts diminished through the impact of the these southern artists. He hosted and employed many Dutch artists sojourning in Italy, including Johannes Glauber (1646-c. 1726) in 1673-74. The influence of his art is to be seen in the works of Jan Frans van Bloemen (1662-1749), Nicolas Guérard (?-1719), his only recorded pupil, and Adrien Manglard (1695-1760).

He died on 15 January 1705 and was buried on 16 January that year in Nôtre-Dame de la Platière, Lyon. His circumstances were modest; however, his estate included works by renowned painters Jean-Francois Millet (1642-1679), known as Francisque, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–1664), suggesting that he was also dealing with art.⁹

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

References
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