Biography

Dutch portrait and history painter. He worked mainly in Gouda and Amsterdam, but also in France and in England, where he lived 1573-81. Van Mander, who was well informed about him, mentions that he painted a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I for the Earl of Hertford in 1578, but the picture is not known. The portrait of Martin Frobisher (Bodleian Library, Oxford), however, is a good example of his work from his English period. Ketel's finest portraits are his group portraits (examples in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), which prefigure those of Frans Hals.