The Governors of the Guild of St Luke

We see a company of seven men in a lavishly appointed room with landscape paintings in gilt frames on the walls and an Oriental carpet on the table. They are the board of governors of the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem. This was the professional organization of artists, which among other things oversaw the training of young artists and protected its members against outside competition. There was a Guild of St Luke in all major art centres of the Republic.

Given the nature of the profession, it is nothing short of remarkable that there was no tradition of portraying the governors of Guilds of St Luke. This work is the exception. The group portrait was painted in 1675 by Jan de Bray, who was a member of the guild’s governing body and therefore appears in the painting himself. He is the second from the left, holding a drawing board. The man seated on the right is his brother Dirck, a specialist in flower paintings, who likewise held an office in the guild at the time. It seems that some of these portraits may be by other artists, because the Rijksmuseum has a drawn copy dating from around 1800 with a note stating that the two men standing behind the table painted their own likenesses and that the portrait of Jan de Bray was done by his brother Dirck.

It is clear, however, that Jan de Bray was in charge here. This artist, who also painted history works, was the most important portraitist in Haarlem after the death of Frans Hals. His style is smoother and more refined than that of his famous contemporary, but like Hals, he endeavoured to portray his models as informally as possible in his compositions. He certainly succeeded in this painting. He produced an extremely lively and realistic-looking group portrait by depicting some of the men sitting and others standing and by varying their poses and the directions in which they were looking.