Jan Frans van Dael

Jan Frans van Dael or Jean-François van Dael (27 May 1764 – 20 March 1840) was a Flemish painter and lithographer specialising in still lifes of flowers and fruit. He had a successful career in Paris where his patrons included the Empresses of France as well as the kings of Restoration France. His work stands in the Flemish and Dutch tradition of flower painting with a sober composition and attention to detail to which he added a French-inspired decorative monumentality.

Life Jan Frans van Dael was born in Antwerp as the son of a joiner. He studied architectural drawing at the Antwerp Academy. He won the academy's first prizes for architecture in 1784 and 1785.

He travelled to Paris in 1786 where he resided there in the artists' accommodations at the Louvre, near artists Piat Joseph Sauvage, Gerard van Spaendonck en Pierre-Joseph Redouté. From 1806 until 1813 he worked as a state-protected artist in a studio in the Sorbonne.

He was originally active as a decorator and worked on projects at the châteaux of St. Cloud, Bellevue and Chantilly. He became self-taught in painting. Under the influence of van Spaendonck he turned to flower painting.

He regularly submitted work to the Paris Salon between 1793 and 1833 as well as to Salons in the Low Countries. Evidence of his success are the many commissions he secured from the Empresses Josephine (who owned five of his works) and Marie-Louise Bonaparte as well as Restoration kings Louis XVIII and Charles X.

Van Dael painted in 1828 a view of his house (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam), which is a small masterpiece. He further painted a few religious and allegorical compositions. One of his best known allegorical paintings is Julie’s Tomb of 1804 (Château de Malmaison). It depicts a flower and fruit arrangement before a tomb and can be read as an allegory of life and death. Van Dael also made a few pure landscapes and occasionally painted portraits, often of fellow artists.

He also made a few lithographs.