BOSSCHAERT, Abraham

Painter, member of a Dutch family of painters of Flemish origin. Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder was one of the first artists to specialize in flower painting in the northern Netherlands. Other members of what has become known as the Bosschaert dynasty of fruit and flower painters include his three sons Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger, Johannes Bosschaert and Abraham Bosschaert, as well as his brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast and the latter's lesser-known brother Johannes van der Ast.

The youngest of three sons of the illustrious Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, Abraham Bosschaert was a prominent painter in Utrecht during the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century. Here he would have been working in close contact with his uncle by marriage Balthasar van der Ast. His work is very hard to distinguish from that of his brother Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger, but fortunately the form of their signature, ABosschaert in each case, differs.