Self-Portrait at the Age of Thirty-Six

portrait

Pickenoy's talent as a portraitist was especially appreciated in Amsterdam up to the arrival of Rembrandt in that city. His self-portrait bears witness to that social prosperity. The artist did not portray himself working, but as an elegant, refined bourgeois enjoying a definite social and material ease.

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About the Artist

Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy

1588 – 1654

Dutch painter. He is frequently incorrectly referred to in the literature without his family name. He was a son of the monumental mason Elias Claesz. Pickenoy who had come to Amsterdam from Antwerp. Nicolaes may have studied painting with Cornelis van der Voort, one of the most important portrait painters in Amsterdam, who also originally came from Antwerp. The earliest work attributed to Pickenoy is Anatomy Lesson of Sebastiaen Egbertsz. de Vrij (1619; Amsterdam, Historical Museum). Although Pickenoy's paintings included other subjects, he apparently earned his living primarily as a portrait painter. Soon after 1624 he succeeded to van der Voort's place as a portrait painter whose work was greatly in demand from the upper-class citizens of Amsterdam.

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