Gerrit Claesz Bleker

1592 – 1656

Gerrit Claesz Bleker (Bleecker, Bliecker), Dutch painter, a Catholic in Protestant Haarlem. He married Anna Emsinck (buried in Haarlem on 18 May 1657), and the couple had a son, Dirck, who became also painter, and two daughters, Catharina (b. ca. 1619/20), who like Dirck remained unmarried, and Maria (b. 1626/27), who married Jacob Willemsz Kool (1639-1666), a painter thirteen years her junior, in Haarlem in 1666. Gerrit was a painter of biblical subjects, cavalry battles and landscapes. He was a member of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, and served as a musketeer in the fourth division of the St George Civic Guard (the Old Civic Guard) from 1639 to 1645. The Bleker family moved to Amsterdam in the latter half of the 1640s.

View all works →