EKELS, Jan the Younger

Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was first trained by his father, Jan Ekels the Elder, and from 1774 to 1781 attended the Amsterdam Tekenacademie. He won prizes in the annual competition for life drawing in 1779 and 1781. In 1776 he went to Paris for two years to further his studies before returning to Amsterdam. Possibly influenced by the revival of interest in Dutch 17th-century art, he became a painter of portraits, genre pieces and ‘moderne gezelschappen’ (modern conversation pieces). In 1783 he travelled along the Rhine in Germany with his friends Daniel Dupré (1752-1817) and Jacques Kuyper (1761-1808), visiting the collections at Düsseldorf and Mannheim. After his return in 1784 he became an active member of the Felix Meritis society.