Abraham van Beijeren

Dutch Republic·1620-1690

Abraham van Beijeren was a Dutch still-life and marine painter, born around 1620 in The Hague to a painter father, Hendrick Gillisz van Beyeren, and trained from 1636 under Tyman Arentsz Cracht. He began with seascapes and fish still lifes, the latter possibly encouraged by his second wife's uncle, the painter Pieter de Putter, and shows the early influence of Jan van Goyen. From the 1650s he turned to the lavish pronkstilleven, piling silver, Chinese porcelain, glass and fruit into dense, glowing compositions indebted to Jan Davidsz. de Heem, worked on an unusually large scale for the genre. His restless life took him from Leiden to The Hague, Delft, Amsterdam, Alkmaar and Gouda before he settled in Overschie, near Rotterdam, where he died in 1690. Little celebrated in his own time, he signed simply with the monogram AVB and rarely dated his work, leaving his chronology uncertain. He is now ranked among the finest Dutch painters of opulent still life, with pictures held by the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Hermitage and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, among others.