Ambrosius Bosschaert

He was born in Antwerp, where he started his career, but he spent most of it in Middelburg (1587–1613), where he moved with his family because of the threat of religious persecution. 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 had 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 moved with him on his travels. Bosschaert later worked in Amsterdam (1614), Bergen op Zoom (1615–1616), Utrecht (1616–1619), and Breda (1619). In 1619 when he moved to Utrecht, his brother-in-law van der Ast entered the Utrecht Guild of St. Luke, where the renowned painter Abraham Bloemaert had just become dean. The painter Roelandt Savery (1576–1639) entered the St. Luke's guild in Utrecht at about the same time. Savery had considerable influence on the Bosschaert dynasty. When Bosschaert died in The Hague while on commission there for a flower piece, Balthasar van der Ast took over running his workshop and pupils.