Arent Arentsz. Cabel
Dutch, 1585 - 1631
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Arent Arentz alias Cabel. Son of Arent. Born in Amsterdam where his father was a sailmaker. When first recorded on the occasion of his marriage in May 1619 at Sloten near Amsterdam, he gave his age as thirtythree (Oud-Holland 1889, p. 29). His wife was a sailmaker's daughter and it stands to reason to assume that this fatherly profession was the first one he was taught.
They went to live on Amsterdam's Prinsengracht and had a new house built for them, which he called "the Cable" like his father's house. He is not mentioned by De Bie, Houbraken etc, In fact he was not rediscovered before 1889. There are no reports about a teacher. The date of his burial at Amsterdam was only traced in 1967 (I.H. van Eeghen, see below). From the pictorial evidence there is a clear link with the style of Hendrick Avercamp, but both Avercamp's handicap and his life data (back in Kampen by 1613) plead against a direct apprenticeship. Arent Arentsz, whose winters, fishing scenes etc. are found in old Amsterdam inventories from the 1630s onwards) must have been a sailmaker by profession, fisherman and hunter by inclination, who acquired the know-how about oils from someone in Amsterdam.
He was then attracted by examples of Avercamp's art, still around at that time in Amsterdam, even painted a near-copy of one of his winterscapes (now at London, Mansion House), but preferred summer landscapes in the end for which he developped a style of his own.