Sentimental Conversation

1663 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

genre

At the beginning of the 1660s, van Brekelenkam turned to representations of courtship and related themes and consequently introduced a hitherto unseen level of elegance and finesse into his work. The Sentimental Conversation of around 1663 shows elaborate furnishings as is fitting for its subject: polite conversation between a smartly dressed couple. The interactions of the figures in this picture (and related ones by the master) owe much to the art of Terborch, the foremost contemporary Dutch painter of courtship themes.

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About the Artist

Quiringh van Brekelenkam

1622 – 1669

Dutch painter. He probably trained in Leiden, possibly under Gerrit Dou. In 1648, with several other painters, he founded the Guild of St Luke in Leiden. He married for the first time in 1648 and again in 1656, a year after his first wife's death. In 1649 his sister Aeltge married the painter Johannes Oudenrogge (1622-53), and the couple soon moved to Haarlem while the Brekelenkam family remained in Leiden. About 1656 Brekelenkam apparently acquired a licence to sell beer and brandy, perhaps because his income as a painter was insufficient to support his large family (six children from his first marriage and three from his second). He continued to be active as an artist and paid his guild dues fairly regularly. The last dues were paid in 1667, and his last dated painting, the Portrait of a Man Aged 33, is from 1669.

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