Portrait of David van Mollem and Son-in-Law Jacob Sydervelt with his Family

The old man seated at the left is David van Mollem, a silk manufacturer. He owned Zijdebalen, a silk works with a country house and a large garden on the river Vecht in Utrecht, and in 1740 he had himself painted there with his son-in-law Jacob Sydervelt, Sydervelt's second wife Maria van Oosterwijck and their children, grouped on the terrace. The panel is signed and dated by Nicolaas Verkolje, who knew that garden well. He had drawn the designs for its statues, which the sculptors Jacob Cresant and Jan Baptist Xavery carried out, and here he set garden vases and an armillary sphere, a model of the heavens made of rings, around the family. Van Mollem was also a major shareholder in the Utrechtsche Compagnie, which in 1736 acquired a coffee plantation in Suriname worked by 59 enslaved men, women and children.