Adriaen (Adrien) VAN DER KABEL, still life with game.

Adriaan (Adrien) Van der Kabel was born in 1631, in Ryswyk, Holland, a small village surrounded by pastureland half a league from The Hague. His father was Cornelis-Jansz Van der Kabel. His mother's name was Maritge (Marguerite) Philips.
Today, the inscription "1664 A... (for Aetatis) 34" on a self-portrait by Van der Kabel (black chalk, Vienna, Albertina) is the most important clue to his date of birth.
After training with the Dutch painter Jan van Goyen, Van der Kabel left for Italy. He spent several years in France, notably in Toulouse, Lyon, Avignon and Aix-en-Provence, where he painted numerous canvases between 1655 and 1659.
During his stay in Rome from around 1659 to 1668, he took a particular interest in artists such as Gaspard Dughet, Pier Francesco Mola, Salvator Rosa and Castiglione.
Arrested on August 20, 1665 for illegally carrying a sword, Van der Kabel declared to the Roman police that he had been living in Rome for around five years, working as a painter.
He seems to have continued his journey as far as Sicily, which could be confirmed by an album of travel drawings featuring a few plates of Sicilian buildings and monuments.
In 1668, he moved to Lyon with his brother Engel Van der Kabel. In the same city, in 1669, he married Suzanne Bourgeois, from whom he had two daughters Priscille (*1670) and Marie (*1671), goddaughter of painter Thomas Blanchet's wife Marie Delacoche, and other children born in 1674 and 1677.

Adrian Van der Kabel died in Lyon on January 15, 1705.
The painter's collection included numerous painted works by Francisque, G.B. Castiglione, Sébastien Bourdon and William Gowe Ferguson, which may well attest to his activity as an art dealer.

As a painter, Van der Cabel preferred oil painting, which enabled him to achieve an original synthesis between the Dutch tradition and Italian-style oil painting.

He also produced some well-known portraits: (Self-portrait, 1693 engraved by A.Bouchet, and Portrait de Jean Estival, Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts) ; the portrait of Jean Chabert (perfume merchant and owner of the store "Au Jardin de Provence" on the place des Terreaux in Lyon) is known from an engraving dated 1679.

Here you can admire a magnificent 17th-century still life with bittern, hare, partridge and hunting horn, demonstrating the painter's virtuosity in rendering textures.