Portrait of Maria Timmers (1658-1753)

The husband was painted first. In 1677 Netscher portrayed Maurits le Leu de Wilhem, a wealthy official in The Hague who held the lordship of Waalwijk in Brabant. Six years later, in April 1683, he married Maria Timmers in Rotterdam, and in the same year Netscher painted her as the companion piece. The two canvases are almost exactly the same size, a little over 48 centimetres high, and it was one of the last portraits Netscher made, since he died the following year.

Maria outlived her husband by almost 30 years and died in The Hague in 1753, in her mid-nineties. The pair seems to have stayed with the family for generations, and in 1855 a descendant, Pauline de Forestier d'Orges van Waalwijk, left both portraits to the Mauritshuis. Her portrait now hangs in the museum's Gallery Prince Willem V.