Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573 – 1621)

• Was a Flemish-born Dutch still life painter and art dealer.
• He founded a dynasty of painters who continued his style of floral and fruit painting and turned Middelburg into the leading centre for flower painting in the Dutch Republic.
• He was born in Antwerp.
• He spent most of it in Middelburg (1587–1613).
• He specialized in painting still lifes with flowers, which he signed with the monogram AB (the B in the A).
• At the age of twenty-one, he joined the city's Guild of Saint Luke and later became dean.
• Not long after, Bosschaert married and established himself as a leading figure in the fashionable floral painting genre.
• He had three sons who all became flower painters: Ambrosius II, Johannes and Abraham.
• His brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast also lived and worked in his workshop and accompanied him on his travels.
• Bosschaert later worked in Amsterdam, Bergen op Zoom, Utrecht, and Breda.
• After Bosschaert died in The Hague while on commission there for a flower piece, Balthasar van der Ast took over his workshop and pupils in Middelburg.
• His sons and his pupil and brother-in-law, Balthasar van der Ast, were among those to uphold the Bosschaert dynasty which continued until the mid-17th century.
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