The younger brother of Tobias Stimmer, Abel Stimmer was active as a portrait painter, printmaker and glass painter in Schaffhausen, Basel and Freiburg im Breisgau. He worked on frescoes in the Haus zum Ritter in Schaffhausen, and became a citizen of Strasbourg in 1580. As an etcher he made several portraits of prominent sitters in the late 1570s and early 1580s. Drawings by Abel Stimmer are rare. Examples are in the collections of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, the Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, the Kupferstichkabinett in Dresden, the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and elsewhere.