Portrait of Cornelis Janson van Ceulen (1593-1661), Elizabeth Beck (?-1670) and Cornelis Janson van Ceulen (1634-1715)

The older man at the centre of this family group was a painter himself, and a well-known one. Cornelis Janson van Ceulen had spent years portraying the court of Charles the First in London, until the English Civil War made that world unlivable. In 1643 he crossed to the Dutch Republic, the country of his family's roots, and rebuilt his practice there. By around 1660 he was near the end of his life, sitting now for a colleague. Adriaen Hanneman, who had also worked in England, gives the group the relaxed, silvery elegance both men had absorbed from Anthony van Dyck, the Flemish master who had defined court portraiture in London. Beside the old painter are his wife, Elizabeth Beck, and his son, another Cornelis, who would carry the family name on into the next century.