Balthasar van der Ast, who specialised in flower paintings, trained with his brother-in-law Ambrosius Bosschaert. His compositions are based and inspired on those of Bosschaert although his use of line and brushstroke is softer. The parallels between his output and those of the Bosschaer family has at times resulted in his work being associated with their output. Van der Ast produced a large body of work that is difficult to date as he only dated his paintings in the 1620s.