Belgian (Flemish) painter, active from 1786 in Paris. He was a painter of fruits and flowers; his patrons included Napoléon, Joséphine, and Louis XVIII; he was made a Chevalier in the Légion d'honneur in 1825. Van Dael remained faithful to the Flemish tradition of flower painting exemplified by Roelandt Savery, with sober composition and attention to detail, but he also brought to many of his flower arrangements a French-inspired decorative monumentality. In some of his ornamental fruit and flower arrangements a landscape background is sketched in, and a few pure landscapes have survived. He painted a small number of religious and allegorical pictures, and also painted occasional portraits, and made lithographs. //