Hendrik van Schuylenburgh

Hendrik van Schuylenburgh is known today through two huge canvases of Bengal. The one dated 1665, more than three metres wide, shows the trading post of the Dutch East India Company at Hooghly-Chinsurah, on the Hooghly river upstream from present-day Kolkata. The Dutch flag flies over the walled compound and ships lie on the river. Around it the painter crowded elephants and camels, Dutch officials carried in palanquins, Indian dignitaries, processions and religious rites. Enslaved people are at work among them.

The commission probably came from Pieter Sterthemius of Middelburg, who had directed the company's business in Bengal from 1655 to 1658, and his coat of arms, joined with his wife's, is painted in the lower right. The canvas and its companion, probably showing the company's post at Cossimbazar, are thought to have hung in the East India House in Middelburg, and both are now in the Rijksmuseum.

Of the painter himself little is known. He appears in the Middelburg painters' guild from 1644 and twice served as one of its governors. His name disappears from the guild records for a few years after 1661, which has led to the suggestion that he went to Bengal himself. He died in Middelburg in 1689.