Portrait of a Painter

Around 1665 to 1670 Godfried Schalcken was in his twenties and only starting out on his own. He had grown up in Dordrecht, where his father was rector of the Latin school, and at 13 he was apprenticed there to Samuel van Hoogstraten, a painter who later wrote a whole book on the art of painting. Around 1663 he went on to Leiden to learn the slow, polished manner of Gerrit Dou, and by about 1669 he was living in Dordrecht again. This panel, about the size of a postcard, comes from those years. A man in a dark cap and coat sits turned in profile, holding a palette and brushes, and they are what tell us he is a painter. The museum does not name him. In Sala 34 the little portrait hangs a few steps from Dou's own work.