Biography
Ferdinand was born in Dordrecht as the son of a surgeon, Balthasar Bol. [2] Ferdinand Bol was first an apprentice of Jacob Cuyp in his hometown and/or of Abraham Bloemaert in Utrecht. After 1630, he studied with Rembrandt, living in his house in Sint Antoniesbreestraat, then a fashionable street and area for painters, jewellers, architects, and many Flemish and Jewish immigrants. [3] In 1641, Bol started his own studio.
In 1652, he became a burgher of Amsterdam, and in 1653, he married Elisabeth Dell, whose father held positions with the Admiralty of Amsterdam and the wine merchants' guild, both institutions that later gave commissions to the artist. Within a few years (1655), he became the head of the guild and received orders to deliver two chimney pieces for rooms in the new town hall designed by Jacob van Campen, and four more for the Admiralty of Amsterdam.
Around this time, Bol was a popular and successful painter. His palette had lightened, his figures possessed greater elegance, and by the middle of the decade he was receiving more official commissions than any other artist in Amsterdam. [4] Godfrey Kneller was his pupil. [5] Bol delivered four paintings for the two mansions of the brothers Trip, originally also from Dordrecht. [6]
Bol's first wife died in 1660. In 1669, Bol married for the second time to Anna van Erckel, widow of the treasurer of the Admiralty, and apparently retired from painting at that point in his life. [7] In 1672, the couple moved to Keizersgracht 672, then a newly designed part of the city, and now the Museum Van Loon. Bol served as a governor in a Home for Lepers. Bol died a few weeks after his wife, on Herengracht, where his son, a lawyer, lived.
Probably his best known painting is a portrait of Elisabeth Bas, the wife of the naval officer Joachim Swartenhondt and an innkeeper near the Dam square. This and many other of his paintings would in the 19th century be falsely attributed to Rembrandt.
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Nicolaes Maes was a Dutch painter known for his genre scenes, portraits, religious compositions and the occasional still life. A pupil of Rembrandt in Amsterdam, he returned to work in his native city of Dordrecht for 20 years. In the latter part of his career he returned to Amsterdam where he became the leading portrait painter of his time. Maes contributed to the development of genre painting in the Netherlands and was the most prominent portrait painter working in Amsterdam in the final three decades of the 17th century.
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Bartholomeus van der Helst was a Dutch painter. Considered to be one of the leading portrait painters of the Dutch Golden Age, his elegant portraits gained him the patronage of Amsterdam's elite as well as the Stadtholder's circle. Besides portraits, van der Helst painted a few genre pictures as well as some biblical scenes and mythological subjects.
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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. It is estimated Rembrandt produced a total of about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings, and two thousand drawings.
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Joan or Johan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen, knighted lord of Maarsseveen, was an important merchant, financial expert, property developer active in Amsterdam and a director of the Dutch East India Company during the Dutch Golden Age. The republican minded Huydecoper was an influential member of the Dutch States Party, diplomat and six times mayor of Amsterdam. He was together with Cornelis de Graeff one of the initiators of the construction of the new town hall of Amsterdam and was a prominent patron of the arts and art collector. Beside Maarsseveen he held the feudal titles of Neerdijk, Thamen and Blockland. Huydecoper is representative of the love of art, political influence and welfare in the Golden Age.
Cornelis van der Voort or van der Voorde was a Dutch Golden Age portrait painter from the early 17th century.
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Joseph Coymans, was a Dutch businessman in Haarlem, known best today for his portrait painted by Frans Hals, and its pendant, Portrait of Dorothea Berck. The former resides at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, the latter at the Baltimore Museum of Art. A portrait of the couple's son Willem is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Jan Gildemeester Jansz. was a Dutch art collector.
Three Regentesses of the Leprozenhuis of Amsterdam is a group portrait by Ferdinand Bol representing three regentesses of the leper colony of Amsterdam, painted c. 1668. The painting is held in the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam.
Portrait of Elisabeth Bas is a portrait by Ferdinand Bol of the Dutch businesswoman Elisabeth Bas, commissioned by her grand-daughter Maria Rey, from the 1640s. It is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, where it is known as Elisabeth Bas and attributed to Ferdinand Bol, though the identity of the sitter is held in doubt by the Rijksmuseum.
Portrait of the Trip Sisters, also known as Portrait of Margarita Trip as Minerva Teaching Her Sister Anna Maria Trip, is an oil on canvas painting by Dutch artist Ferdinand Bol, created in 1663. It is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, but is currently displayed at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, also in Amsterdam. It is signed and dated 'fBol 1663'.
Portrait of Johanna de Geer and her Children as Charity or Portrait of Johanna de Geer and her Two Children Cecilia and Laurens Trip as Caritas is an oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter Ferdinand Bol, from c. 1664. It is part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum, but hangs on long-term loan to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, also in Amsterdam. The painting is signed at the bottom center 'fBol · fecit ·'. It was probably made c. 1664.
Portrait of Michiel de Ruyter is a 1667 oil on canvas painting of Michiel de Ruyter by Ferdinand Bol, with a marine landscape in the background thought to be by Willem van de Velde (II) including de Ruyter's flagship De Zeven Provinciën.
