The Zeeland painter Cornelis Kimmel lived and worked in Middelburg almost all his life. He was trained as an artist at the Teeken-Academie, of which he would later become director, and was then taught by the marinist Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek. He then learned to paint in the studio of the Ghent history painter Pieter van Hanselaere. Kimmel specialized in creating summer and winter landscapes and ice scenes with skaters, a popular genre in the first half of the 19th century. He also made (miniature) portraits.