Salomon de Bray

Salomon de Bray was the kind of Golden Age figure who never stayed in one trade. In Haarlem he painted history scenes and portraits, designed silverware, published on architecture, wrote poetry, and served the city council as a town planner. Around 1660 he drew up an ambitious scheme to expand Haarlem northward with three new canals.

He had trained young in the Haarlem drawing academy run by Karel van Mander and Hendrick Goltzius, the older masters who shaped Dutch draughtsmanship, and by the 1630s his calm, classical figures were widely admired. With his wife Anna he raised at least ten children. The sons Jan, Dirck and Joseph all became painters, and Jan grew into one of Haarlem's finest portraitists.

The family's story then breaks off sharply. Plague swept Haarlem through 1663 and 1664, taking Anna, then Salomon, then four of the children within a few months in the spring of 1664. The portrait Jan painted of his parents still survives.