Isaac Elias

In 1629 a painter signed a merry company Isack Elyas, and that signature is nearly all that survives of him. The panel is in the Rijksmuseum. No other signed work by him is known, and no record of his birth, his training or his death has turned up.

Where he worked is a judgement from style. His figures recall those of Willem Buytewech and Dirck Hals, painters of elegant merry companies who both worked in Haarlem, and the museum places him, probably, in that city. A few unsigned small portraits on copper from the 1620s have been tentatively linked to his name.