By the advice of Professor Camper, he established himself at Amsterdam, where he painted a great number of portraits and cabinet pictures; among the latter is one of the celebrated amateur Jan Gildemeester showing his collection to a party of ladies and gentlemen, in which the principal pictures are readily recognised.
In 1777 Petrus Camper thought it was a lizard (Lacerta), and at that time there was no differentiation between reptiles and amphibians by the scientific community.
He became a teacher himself and taught the anatomy writers Petrus Camper and Johannes le Francq van Berkhey.
He attended lectures at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam and wrote the original report of the lectures of Petrus Camper on the facial angle.
At Franeker he became close personal friends with one of the curators, the Dutch lawyer, administrator and politician Squire Adriaan Gillis Camper, himself the son of professor of anatomy Petrus Camper.
According to Roeland van Eynden and Adriaan van der Willigen in their dictionary of artists known as Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, he was a pupil along with Petrus Camper of the genre painter Louis de Moni.
In his youth Krabbé studied the Face Book (Gelatenboek) by Petrus Camper (1780) and found his inspiration as a painter in Cubism, children’s drawings, Joseph René Gockinga (1893–1962) and Aubrey Beardsley.
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