Jan de Bray (Haarlem, c. 1627 – Amsterdam, 1697)

He was the oldest son of the painter-architect Salomon de Bray (1597-1664) and his wife, Anna Westerbaen (1605-1663). His brothers Joseph de Bray (c. 1628/34-1664) and Dirck de Bray (c. 1638-1694) were artists as well. Jan spent the largest part of his career in his native Haarlem. No details about his early life and artistic training are known; it is thus assumed that Jan was trained in his father’s workshop. His maternal uncle, Jan Westerbaen (c. 1600/02-1686), was a portrait painter in The Hague and undoubtedly contributed to Jan’s formative years as a portraitist.¹¹P. Biesboer (ed.), Painting Family: The De Brays: Master Painters of 17th-century Holland, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/London (Dulwich Picture Gallery) 2008, p. 19. His earliest surviving drawing, the Portrait of an 81-year old Man in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1127), is dated 1648;²²J. Giltaij, Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697). Schilder en architect, Zwolle 2017, no. T2. the earliest painting, a Portrait of a Five-year-old Girl in the National Gallery, Prague (inv. no. O 1113), is from 1650.³³Ibid, no. 1. In 1664 Jan entered the Haarlem Guild of St Luke and established himself as a portrait painter. Like his father, he also worked as an architect. Several etchings by his hand are also known. From 1688 until his death, De Bray lived and worked in Amsterdam, where in 1692 he was granted citizenship.⁴⁴Ibid., p. 18; RKD Artists, https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/12194; accessed 10 May 2021.

De Bray married three times, in 1668, 1672 and 1678. Each union was short-lived: the first two wives died only a year after their marriage, his third marriage lasted only two years before his wife passed away. From this union a son was born, Jan Lucas de Bray (1678-?), who was named as Jan’s heir in the artist’s will of 1683.⁵⁵Ibid., pp. 16, 19. The deaths of all three wives were followed by disputes over inheritance, and it may well have been that one of these lawsuits eventually contributed to De Bray’s bankruptcy in 1689. This financial blow and the consequent loss of social position may explain De Bray’s waning artistic drive from that year onward.⁶⁶J.W. von Moltke, ‘De Bray family’ (2003), Grove Art Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T011005; accessed 10 May 2021.

Paintings
Individual portraits make up more than half of De Bray’s painted output. Besides these, there are double portraits and five large and important group portraits, dating between 1663 and 1675 relating to the regent and the local Haarlem militia company. Responding to contemporary taste, De Bray also painted several historical family portraits – a cross between history painting and pure portraiture – in which sitters are depicted as personifications in Classical or mythological guise. The canvas David with the Harp (1674) in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (inv. no. 286) is an example of De Bray’s purely historical imagery.⁷⁷P. Biesboer (ed.), Painting Family: The De Brays: Master Painters of 17th-century Holland, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/London (Dulwich Picture Gallery) 2008, p. 100, fig. 34a. This picture also testifies of the artist’s increasingly academic style that permeated his work in the last decades of his career, at the cost of his originality and artistic spontaneity.

Drawings
After his father Solomon, Jan was the most talented and productive draughtsman of the family. His surviving corpus of drawings – 77 described in Giltaij’s catalogue raisonné – is relatively small, and it is assumed that many sheets were lost over time. Jan’s drawn oeuvre shows a variety of styles, which likely served different functions.⁸⁸J. Giltaij, Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697). Schilder en architect, Zwolle 2017, p. 41. His drawing of 1648 in the British Museum shows strong affinity to the works of his fellow townsmen Cornelis Visscher (c. 1628/29-1658) and Cornelis Bega (c. 1631/32-1664). This ‘Haarlem style’ is characterized by the use of black and red chalk, fine lines and diagonal hatching, which Jan reserved mainly for his portrait drawings. These highly refined portraits, dating from the 1650s, are not related to painting commissions, but should be regarded as independent works of art.⁹⁹Ibid., p. 41.

Figure studies in black and white chalk on blue paper also reflect the tradition of his Haarlem contemporaries and have led to confusion concerning their authorship. Several drawings previously attributed to De Bray, for example, have recently been identified as works by Leendert van der Cooghen (1632-1681).¹⁰¹⁰Ibid., p. 48.

Another important category of drawings consists of ricordo copies after paintings by Jan’s father or himself. These relatively large and highly finished drawings were done either in black and/or red chalk, or in pen and brown ink, with delicate grey washes. Similar reproductive drawings by the other members of the family are known and form evidence of the close working relationship between the members of the family studio.¹¹¹¹Ibid., p. 46. Both Jan and his brothers Joseph and possibly Dirck replicated the works by Salomon and himself. This practice is unique among contemporary Dutch artist families, and apparently was considered important in the formation of a kind of archive that could serve as a record of past projects and as source material for future commissions of prospective clients.¹²¹²J. Giltaij and F. Lammertse, ‘Maintaining a Studio Archive: Drawn Copies by the De Braij Family’, Master Drawings 39 (2001), no. 4, pp. 367-68, 380, 390-91. Joseph made copies after paintings by both Salomon and Jan. Dirck may also have copied works by his father and brothers.

Less commonly preserved – although perhaps once numerous – are Jan’s land- and cityscapes in black chalk documenting the environs of Haarlem,¹³¹³Cf. J. Giltaij, Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697). Schilder en architect, Zwolle 2017, p. 237-39. a subgenre that includes the museum’s two rudimentary sketches of Amsterdam shipyards (inv. nos. RP-T-1898-A-3513 and RP-T-1898-A-3514).

Many of the drawings by Jan de Bray are signed and dated, often recording the month, the day and the year, thereby providing highly accurate accounts of his artistic activities and development.

Saskia van Altena, 2021

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, I (1718), p. 176; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, I, pp. 174-75; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, IV (1910), p. 555; W. Martin, De Hollandsche schilderkunst in die zeventiende eeuw: Frans Hans en zijn tijd. Onze 17e eeuwsche schilderkunst in het algemeen, in hare opkomst en rondom Frans Hals, Amsterdam [1935], 2 vols., I, pp. 27, 49, 117–19; J.W. von Moltke, ‘Jan de Bray’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 11/12 (1938-39), pp. 421-523; W. Bernt, Die niederländischen Zeichner des 17. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Munich 1957-58, I, pp. 114-115; A. Blankert, Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat. Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Art)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1980-81, pp. 224-9; B. Haak, Hollandse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw, Amsterdam 1984, pp. 379-80; J. Giltaij and F. Lammertse, ‘Maintaining a Studio Archive: Drawn Copies by the De Braij Family’, Master Drawings 39 (2001), no. 4, pp. 367-94; J.W. von Moltke, “De Bray family” (2003), Grove Art Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T011005; P. Biesboer (ed.), Painting Family: The De Brays: Master Painters of 17th-century Holland, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/London (Dulwich Picture Gallery) 2008; J. Giltaij, Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697). Schilder en architect, Zwolle 2017; RKD Artists, https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/12194