 Abraham Matthijs was born in Antwerp as the son of the fishmonger Hendrik Matthijs and Margaretha van Roubergen.His parents were relatively well-off as they owned their own house on the Vismarkt.At the age of 10 Abraham he was registered at the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke as a pupil of Tobias Verhaecht, a landscape painter who had been the first teacher of Rubens.