Abraham del Court and Maria de Keersegieter

1654 · Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

portrait

Van der Helst's life-size Abraham del Court and Maria de Keersegieter of 1654 shows him at the top of his form as a portraitist of private patrons. The drawing of the elegant married couple seated in a garden is faultless and the rendering of their costly garments, the very last word in haut couture among the elite circles, is rendered with technical perfection. Nothing is known about del Court as a connoisseur of painting but he certainly was an expert on textiles.

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About the Artist

Bartholomeus van der Helst

1613 – 1670

Dutch painter. he was born in Haarlem, settled in Amsterdam in 1636, and in the 1640s took over from Rembrandt as the most popular portraitist in the city, his detailed, tasteful, and slightly flattering likenesses appealing more to the fashionable burghers than the master's work, which was becoming more individual and introspective. Van der Helst's influence during his lifetime was great. For example, Rembrandt's talented pupils Bol and Flinck abandoned the style of their master in order to follow his more popular manner. His reputation endured into the next century and as late as 1782 Reynolds wrote that van der Helst's Banquet of the Amsterdam Civic Guard in Celebration of the Peace of Münster 'is, perhaps, the first picture of portraits in the world', adding that it as far exceeded his expectations as Rembrandt's Night Watch fell below them.

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