Officer, Standing

For most of the 19th century this little officer went under another painter's name. At an Amsterdam auction in 1873 he was sold as a work by Anthonie Palamedesz, a Delft painter of soldiers and merry companies, for 185 guilders. Three years later, at a sale in Paris, the catalogue still gave him to Palamedesz, now only as attributed.

The buyer in Paris was Victor de Stuers, the Dutch official who had just begun a campaign to stop the country's art and monuments from being sold off or demolished. He paid 510 francs, for the Dutch State. The panel is only about 40 centimetres high, a single officer standing on his own, and today it is given to Willem Duyster and dated around 1625 to 1635. It belongs to the Mauritshuis, and since 2010 it has hung in the museum's second venue, the Gallery Prince Willem V in The Hague.