In short

Egbert van Heemskerck the Elder was a versatile, productive Dutch genre scene painter of tavern scenes. He divided the major part of his career over his birthplace Haarlem and over London.

Our painting might represent a young woman suffering from ‘love sickness’. It has been painted on the backside of an older, so re-used copper plate holding an engraving’s design.

About Egbert van Heemskerck I

Dutch painter
Haarlem 1610 - 1680 London

Painter of genre scenes, especially humorous low-life scenes, most typically depicting peasants in tavern interiors, often in comic or even vulgar situations. Egbert I is also known for his representations of Quaker meetings and of school classrooms.

He is said to have been a pupil of Pieter de Grebber, although there is no proof for this. 

He is clearly indebted to Adriaen Brouwer, Jan Miense Molenaer, Adriaen and Isaac van Ostade and Jan Steen. Like his Haarlem predecessors, these low-life types enjoying themselves in shabby and primitively furnished taverns, held an immense fascination, continuing in fact the peasant painting tradition started by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Son of doctor Jasper Jaspersz. Van Heemskerck en Marytge Jansdr. van Stralen. After his father’s death his mother remarried the art dealer and tavern-holder Jan Wijnants, father of the homonymous landscape painter Jan Wijnants, so that Egbert van Heemskerck I and Jan Wijnants were step-brothers.

Our painter was active in Haarlem from 1646 until 1663.
He planned to travel to Italy in 1655, but it is not known if he went or not.
In 1663 he worked in The Hague, in 1665 in Amsterdam, in 1667 in Weesp.
Around the middle of the 1670s he left with his family to England.
He lived in London and Oxford between 1680/85 and his death in 1704.

A painting of King Charles II surrounded by his favourite ladies-in-waiting (untraced) is said almost to have cost van Heemskerck his head. 

One of King Charles's most licentious courtiers, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1645-80), is thought to have been the artist's patron. John Wilmot was a famous libertine, member of the “Merry Gang”, writer of satirical poetry.

Egbert I was the father and teacher of Egbert II (Haarlem or possibly in England circa 1676– 1744 England), who was strongly influenced by him: he adopted similar compositions with updated costumes. He later became an actor. Confusion reigns between the artistic production of father and son.