The Artist's Family Portrait

Here Netscher painted his own household. It is a family group from 1664, a couple of years after he had settled in The Hague and begun to make a name for himself. In his own record book he noted the price he had set for it, 140 guilders, a serious sum at the time, which tells you he treated even this personal picture as a proper commission and not a private keepsake. He dressed his wife and children in the same shimmering silk and satin he was learning to sell to wealthy clients, so his own family sits before us with the finish of paying sitters. He was about 25 when he painted it.