Van Kessel had thirteen children and numerous debts. He was captain of the Civic Guard in Antwerp, a productive artist with royal clients, and still died owing money. The combination of civic standing and insolvency was not unusual for seventeenth-century Flemish painters, but the scale of his family made it harder to manage.

He was born in Antwerp in 1626, the grandson of Jan Brueghel the Elder through his mother Paschasia. He studied under Simon de Vos and later received instruction from his uncle and godfather Jan Brueghel the Younger. He became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke in 1644 as a flower painter, though flowers were only one of his subjects. He painted garlands, bouquets, marines, river landscapes, paradise scenes, allegories and genre subjects, but he is best known for tiny, jewel-like paintings of insects and shells on copper, depicted against light backgrounds with scientific exactitude.

He worked from nature and from illustrated scientific texts, blending direct observation with published sources. His small insect panels were sometimes produced in pairs or as series designed to decorate the fronts of cabinet drawers where collectors stored actual specimens. The paintings served as both art and catalogue.

He used two different signatures depending on the size of the painting: a cursive, decorative version for larger formats and a more compact form for miniatures. The practice was later misinterpreted as evidence that two different painters were at work. He spent time in Spain as court painter to Philip IV and as a captain in the King's army, probably in the late 1640s. He married Maria van Apshoven in 1647; of their thirteen children, Ferdinand and Jan the Younger also became painters. He died in Antwerp in 1679.