Portrait of Paulus Potter (1625-1654)

Paulus Potter was buried in Amsterdam on 17 January 1654, two months after his 28th birthday. Tuberculosis had killed him. He had moved to the city less than two years before, at the invitation of Nicolaes Tulp, the surgeon and city magistrate who collected his work, and he was already known for The Bull, his huge picture of a young bull that also hangs in the Mauritshuis.

Van der Helst signed and dated this portrait in 1654, and the museum describes it as a tribute painted shortly after Potter's death. He sits half turned in a carved chair, in black velvet with a white collar, his long red hair on his shoulders, a palette and a handful of brushes in one hand. Behind him an easel holds a bare canvas. The portrait stayed with his widow, Adriana van Balckeneynde, and then with the family of her second husband until 1820, when it was bought for King Willem I for 430 guilders.