The evidence for the traditional identification of the sitters is unknown. The man's gesture may refer to the ownership of the estate shown in the background. The basket of grapes may be a biblical reference to the woman's fertility (' Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine...', Psalm 128: 3). The painting was formerly catalogued as bearing the date 1636. There is no trace of this inscription now, but the costume appears to be of the 1630s. The landscape may be by another h&. ...

Jean de la Chambre (1605/6
- 1668), who is shown holding a quill, was a distinguished calligrapher & Master of the French School
...

Johann Friedrich (1503
- 1554) succeeded his father in 1532 as the Elector of Saxony. He was six years old when this picture was
...

This portrait of the Elector of Saxony (1468
- 1532) is joined as a diptych with his the portrait of his son, ' Johann Friedrich
...

The sitter's identity is traditional & unverified. Banks Fee is near Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire & was bought by John Scott in 1753. A ' Mr Scott' was recorded by Charles Burney in 1770 as being in Rome, but it is not known if he is the same pe ...

Lucas Fayd' Herbe was a cousin of Pieter Franchoijs & had returned to his native Malines in Belgium by 1640. The costume has been dated to about 1640-50. Fayd'herbe was a pupil of Rubens, but Franchoijs has painted his cousin as a fashionable gentleman rather than as an artist. At this time artists were being presented & commemorated as worthy additions to the traditional careers that qualified as ' Famous Men'. ...

Ludovicus Nonnius (1553
- 1645) was a friend of Rubens. He was a doctor & antiquarian from a Portuguese family who worked in Antwerp.
...

This work is dated 1661, which was probably the year in which Rembrandt painted the portraits of Margaretha de Geer & of her husband Jacob Trip. It is not clear whether Rembrandt made this smaller version later or during the same sittings for the large pictures. Margaretha de Geer is wearing the same old-fashioned clothes with the mill-stone ruff & the peaked headdress, & is shown in a related pose. This work could have been intended for another family member, or for the sitter herself. The picture is of high quality & has always been catalogued as a Rembrandt, although there are some unusual technical features about it. The ground with which the canvas is prepared is different from the kind Rembrandt normally used. While unusual for Rembrandt, this method of preparation is not unknown for a 17th-century painting. The handling of the paint also differs from that of the larger portrait by being more fluid & rapid. This suggests that the present painting is either an authentic work which is different because of the circumstances of its creation, or it is a skilful 17th-century imitation of Rembrandt's work by another painter. ...

This portrait, dating from the last decade of Rembrandt's life, depicts Margaretha de Geer, the wife of the extremely wealthy Dordrecht merchant, Jacob Trip. Jacob Trip (1575
- 1661) made his vast fortune from mining, manufacturing iron & from trading with armaments. The Trips married in 1603. They sat for these portraits when they were both in their eighties, just before Jacob's death in 1661. The ' Portrait of Jacob Trip' has less vitality than that of his wife. It is conceivable that it was finished posthumously. Margaretha de Geer is depicted with great honesty. She confronts the viewer directly & her age clearly shows in her hands & face. Not untypical for a woman of her generation & age she wears old-fashioned clothes; the large ruff & gown had been fashionable forty years earlier, in the 1620s. Between 1660-2 the couple's sons, Louis & Hendrick, built the ' Trippenhuis', a grand classicising mansion on one of Amsterdam's canals. It is possible that these portraits were meant to hang there.
...

John Calcott Horsley was the nephew of the landscape painter Augustus Wall Callcott & was educated at the Royal Academy. The famous Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was Horsley's brother-in-law. Horsley began his career as a portrait artist but ...