Workshop of Gerrit van Honthorst

This name stands for a business. By the 1630s Gerard, or Gerrit, van Honthorst, the Utrecht painter who had made his reputation with candlelit scenes, was portraitist to the court of the stadholder, the prince who led the Dutch Republic. Demand for likenesses of the House of Orange outran what one man could paint. In 1637 he set up a second workshop in The Hague, close to the court, and kept his studio in Utrecht running. Joachim von Sandrart, a German painter who trained with him in the 1620s, later wrote that Honthorst had as many as 25 pupils at a time, each paying 100 guilders a year.

Assistants turned out repeats of approved portraits for town halls, admiralties and allied courts. A portrait of Prince Willem II in armour in the Rijksmuseum, dated 1651, repeats the prince's figure from a double portrait with his wife Mary Stuart that Honthorst painted in 1647. The Mauritshuis portrait of the same prince carries this workshop label.