Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Casteels, Peter

by no contributor recorded

CASTEELS, PETER (1684–1749), painter and engraver, was one of that host of second-rate foreigners who found happy hunting-grounds in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was born in Antwerp in 1684; came to England in 1703, and revisited Antwerp in 1716. He shortly returned, however, and settled in this country. He painted birds, fowls, fruit, and flowers ‘in an inferior manner.’ He worked more successfully with the graver. Lord Burlington patronised him, and published, at his own charges, Casteels's ‘Villas of the Ancients,’ giving the artist the profits. In 1726 Casteels published on his own account twelve etchings of birds and fowls, and also some engravings from his own pictures. In 1735 he obtained work as a designer in the calico works at Tooting, and removed thither; later he followed the factory to Richmond, and there died 16 May 1749.

[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, iii. 652, ed. 1849.]