Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
In Rome Kessels taught the Liege sculptors Louis Jehotte (c. 1803-84) and Eugène Simonis, who exerted an influence through their teaching at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Another student of Kessels was the Dutch sculptor Johannes Antonius van der Ven, who sculpted his funeral stone.