Monday, October 4, 2021

Jan de Bray (Family and Group Portraits in Haarlem)

Jan de Bray
Allegorical Family Portrait
ca. 1665-70
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jan de Bray
Banquet of Cleopatra
(Portrait of the de Bray Family)

1652
oil on canvas
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Jan de Bray
Banquet of Cleopatra
(Portrait of the de Bray Family)

1669
oil on canvas
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire

The second version of the Banquet of Cleopatra was painted more as a family memorial, most of the artist's relatives from the original 1652 version having died in the plague of 1663-64.  

Jan de Bray
Portrait of a Couple as Penelope and Ulysses
1668
oil on canvas
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Jan de Bray
Portrait of the printer Abraham Casteleyn and his wife Margarieta
1663
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan de Bray
Regents of the Pest House in Haarlem
1667
oil on canvas
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Jan de Bray
Governors of the Guild of Saint Luke, Haarlem
1675
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan de Bray
Family Group
Portrait of a Boy aged eleven

1663
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Jan de Bray
Family Group
Portrait of a Boy aged seven

1663
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Jan de Bray
Family Group
Portrait of a Father

1662
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Jan de Bray
Family Group
Portrait of a Mother

1663
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Jan de Bray
Suffer the Little Children to come unto Me
(Family Portrait of Pieter Braems,
Emmerentia van der Laen and their Children)

1663
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Jan de Bray
Suffer the Little Children to come unto Me
(Family Portrait of Pieter Braems,
Emmerentia van der Laen and their Children)

1663
oil on panel
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Jan de Bray
Musical Group surrounded by Putti
1652
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jan de Bray
Violin Player with Two Young Singers
1658
oil on canvas
private collection

"Tragedy struck the family when both of Jan's parents and four of his siblings died in a plague that ravaged Haarlem from 1663 to 1664.  Jan suffered further personal losses when each of his three marriages ended in the untimely death of his wife, all of whom shared the artist's Catholic faith.  . . .  Despite the tragedies of his personal life, De Bray pursued a successful artistic career in Haarlem, where he was named dean of the Saint Luke's Guild several times in the 1670s and 1680s.  He was one of the foremost Dutch artists working in the classical tradition, a style of painting in Holland that fused naturalism with ideals of beauty that originated in antiquity.  De Bray was also an architect and an inventor, but he was foremost a painter of portraits and historical subjects.  Often he blended these two genres in what is known as the portrait historié, or historicized portrait.  Works of this type portrayed contemporary individuals in the guise of figures from the Bible, mythology, or ancient history and literature, thereby drawing parallels between the virtues of the sitters and those of the historical personages."

– from biographical sketch at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC