Help With Signture & Location On Antique Oil - ABEL?

The last name looks like Abel or possibly Abels. Not sure of the first initial - F, J?
Maybe if someone help with the location it will be easier to figure the artist.
The piece was recently restored but that is all I know.
Also, any guess on the age?
Thanks

 

It looks Dutch, vaguely.

 

Looks like your basic genre painting. The signature may not even have been a real person.

 

Not sure what do you mean by basic genre painting? Does a building by the water with boats and people necessarily mean that it is mass produced/ factory painting?
By the way, I found some German writings on the back. There may be more but I don't want to tear the whole backing paper. The first word is fully visible, not sure about the second, could be partly covered by the patch. Cannot make them out.

 

Looks like the second word there might be Amsterdam.

 

It looks like that to me too. To me it looks like a rather generic landscape/cityscape painting. The artist would have painted this from life, and then sold it as a tourist souvenir most likely. A genre painting is a scene of daily life.

 

Thanks for the Amsterdam suggestion. I will try to take a better photo of the first word. I suspect it is the name of the place.
Surely the piece could be a tourist one. But I am afraid I will have to disagree that there is a straight relation between an everyday scene and a painting being made by street corner artist. There are tons of examples of everyday life scenes made by famous painters. Otherwise, according to that rule, a piece has to have an unique subject to be made by a listed or non-tourist artist.

 

Wonder if it could be Jacob Abels. He was an artist and was from Amsterdam. Google and see what you think. Claudia

 

Does not seem to match Jacob Abels style but I will try to search more of his work.

 

Take some tissue paper and a soft-lead pencil and trace over the letters -- don't try to decipher while you're doing the tracing. Then, look at the tracing and see if you can make out part of the word(s).

 

Looks like Jenkmankat / Jenkmanket / Jenkmarckat / Jenkmarcket -- None of which lead to anything...

 

The tissue trick would not work. The writing is too dark. The picture is enhanced.
The last letters looks like 'in', so, so far J...... In Amsterdam.
I've tried many variations but nothing to make sense. The letter before the last 't' is a real puzzle to me. Not that the rest are not.

 

Does this rendition help? It looks to me like the first letter could be a "J" or an "F" maybe.



I haven't been to Amsterdam, but saw photos on the web of buildings and arched bridges that look a lot like the ones in the painting.

 

Either J or F but not enough to decipher the rest. I am thinking if it reads " something in Amsterdam" it would make sense to be the name of the place or the building.

 

I was thinking the same thing. I tried looking up various towers in Amsterdam, but nada.

 

I was thinking, maybe it reads. ' Fischmarkt In Amsterdam' . If so, it would be in German because in Dutch it would be 'Vismarkt'.
But they have different dialects in the Netherlands, maybe some of them have more German words. Or maybe the artist was from Germany or German speaking country. Or someone else but the artist wrote the text....