Portrait of a Boy in Grey

The boy wears a smart grey suit, and Backer painted him with hardly any other colour. The whole oval is worked in shades of grey, with a little red kept for the cheeks and the lips. He is also looking down at us, which was unusual in a portrait of a child. Backer signed and dated the canvas 1634, when he was working in Amsterdam, and the boy's name has not come down with it.

The picture has a long connection with the Mauritshuis itself. Before 1846 it belonged to Johan Steengracht van Oostkapelle, the first director of the Mauritshuis, and it stayed with his heirs in The Hague until their collection was sold in 1913. The following year Cornelia Rose-Molewater gave it to the museum through the Rembrandt Association, a Dutch society that helps museums acquire art.