Background
He trained with his father Willem van Veerendael. He married Catharina van Beveren, the daughter of the prominent Antwerp sculptor Mattheus van Beveren.
He trained with his father Willem van Veerendael. He married Catharina van Beveren, the daughter of the prominent Antwerp sculptor Mattheus van Beveren.
Financial rewards were lean as he was a slow worker and as a result he lived modestly. His early work shows the influence of the leading Antwerp flower still life painter Daniel Seghers and later he was influenced by January Davidsz. de Heem, Some of his still lifes include vanitas motifs and insects. Van Veerendael developed towards a brisker brushstroke in his later years and he found a personal style that was a forerunner of Flemish flower painting in the 18th century.
Nicolaes van Verendael contributed to the spread of the genre of the "monkey scene", also called "singerie" (a word, which in French means a "comical grimace, behaviour or trick").
Comical scenes with monkeys appearing in human attire and a human environment are a pictorial genre that was initiated in Flemish painting in the 16th century and was subsequently further developed in the 17th century. The Flemish engraver Pieter van der Borcht introduced the singerie as an independent theme around 1575 in a series of prints, which are strongly embedded in the artistic tradition of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
These prints were widely disseminated and the theme was then picked up by other Flemish artists in particular by those in Antwerp such as Frans Francken the Younger, January Brueghel the Elder and the Younger, Sebastiaen Vrancx and January van Kessel the Elder. Later in the 17th century Nicolaes van Verendael started to paint these ‘monkey scenes’ as well.
Liedtke, Walter A. (1984).
Flemish paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Artist New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Artist (p270-272, v1; plate 105, v2).
Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke]
He became a member of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1657.