Former Amsterdam mayor and his wife identified as models in Frans Hals portraits

When the Amsterdam militia of the early 17th century fell out with the Haarlem painter employed to paint their portrait, a middle-aged man called Frans Hals, two astute newlyweds took advantage of a break from his employment of the time.

Researchers at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam revealed that a pair of hanging matrimonial portraits painted by the famous portraitist Hals around 1637 were that of the seven-time mayor of Amsterdam Jan van de Poll and his wife Duifje van Gerwen.

Hals had had problems with a large portrait of the Amsterdam militia that he had started in 1633 because he was too busy to travel, and many militia members were apparently unwilling to take the barge from three hours. to sit for him in Haarlem. So while an Amsterdam-based painter, Pieter Codde, completed the painting titled The Skinny Company…in 1637, the wily van de Poll and van Gerwen “apparently took advantage of this gap in Hal’s calendar,” according to the Rijksmuseum.

Van de Poll, who lived from 1597 to 1678, and Van Gerwen, born in 1618, were married in 1637. He served as mayor of Amsterdam and rose to the highest rank as colonel in the city's militia; she was the youngest daughter of a wealthy wine merchant and died at age 40.

They were identified when Rijksmuseum researchers compared the man's image to two other portraits, one by Johann Spilberk in 1650 and the other by Bartholomeus van der Helst in 1653.

Dr Jonathan Bikker, curator of 17th-century Dutch painting at the Rijksmuseum, said he had long disputed the original attribution of the models for the two paintings, which came to the museum as part of an 1885 bequest. The models were Nicolaes Hasselaer and Sara Wolphaerts van Diemen. “I found documents that absolutely ruled that out, so I started looking into who it was…all the way down the inheritance line,” he said. “The problem was that (Van de Poll and Van Gerwen) were citizens of Amsterdam and I didn't see the connection with Frans Hals.”

When asked to review identities for a current Hals exhibition, he realized that van Gerwen's uncle, Willem Warmond, had moved to Haarlem and appeared as captain in a group portrait of the Haarlem militia painted by Hals a decade earlier. “Rembrandt had stopped painting portraits in 1635 and he was the most sought-after portrait painter. So when you think about it, Hals was a very good choice.

Hals was born in Antwerp around 1582 and fled with his parents to Haarlem as a child. Museum collections manager Frans Hals, Marrigje Rikken, thinks that it may have been used occasionally by Amsterdammers for its cheaper price. “The Amsterdam Meager company asked for Hals, we think because it was cheaper,” she said at a press conference in February. “But there was an argument, so they summoned him through a notary… they even increased the price… but in the end they asked another painter from Amsterdam to finish it.”

The pendant portraits he apparently made instead will be on display at the Rijksmuseum until Sunday June 9, then at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin for its exhibition on Hals and his contemporaries.