Jacob Adriaensz Backer(Harlingen 1608/9 – Amsterdam 1651)

How to citeBakker, Piet. “Jacob Adriaensz Backer” (2022). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archivedDecember 2023).
A PDF of every version of this biography is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed bya permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

Jacob Adriaensz Backer was born in the Frisian seaport of Harlingen in 1608 or 1609 to the Mennonite baker Adriaen
Tjercksz (ca. 1575–1626) and Hilk Folckerts (d. ca. 1610). His mother died soon thereafter, and his father took a secondwife, Elsje Roelofs (ca. 1576–1614), the widow of a baker, in Amsterdam in 1611. Tjercksz moved with his family into
De Gloeiende Oven, the bakery of Elsje’s late husband on the Nieuwendijk. Jacob Backer grew up among fellow believers,
as well as among several of Amsterdam’s most famous history painters, including Claes Moyaert (ca. 1592–1655) and Jan
Pynas (1581/2–1631). The workshop of Pynas, most likely Backer’s first teacher, was less than one hundred meters fromhis parental home.[1]Following his father’s death in 1626, the eighteen-year-old Backer returned to the province of Friesland to study and work
under the Mennonite history painter Lambert Jacobsz (ca. 1598–1636) in Leeuwarden. They knew each other well, forJacobsz had lived on the Nieuwendijk diagonally opposite the Backers until 1620.[2] Jacobsz involved Backer closely in hisworkshop production from the very beginning, which is why Backer’s early work is often difficult to distinguish from thatof his second master.[3] In Leeuwarden, Backer worked for a few years together with Govaert Flinck (1615–60), whostarted out as an apprentice under Jacobsz around 1629. Backer also became acquainted with the famous Frisian portraitist
Wybrand de Geest (1592–ca. 1664), whose workshop was around the corner from Jacobsz’s. De Geest painted a portrait ofJacob Backer (now lost), which Backer’s half brother Dirck (1612–52) owned.[4]Backer returned to Amsterdam, possibly in 1632, but certainly by 1633. In that year, he and his brother Tjerck signed anotarial document as “inwoonders deser stede” (inhabitants of this city).[5] Whether Backer established himself immediately
as an independent painter is not known. In any case, his move to Amsterdam was not related to a period of study with
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69), as has long been assumed. This misunderstanding is based on an incorrect interpretationof a comment in Arnold Houbraken’s Schouburgh regarding Backer’s departure from Leeuwarden.[6]In Amsterdam, Backer (who never married), probably moved in with his brother Tjerck, who had taken over their father’s© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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bakery on the Nieuwendijk in 1626. Tjerck would later move to the Nieuwezijds Achterburgwal. Backer regularly sought
the company of the landscape painter Steven van Goor (1608–ca. 1660), a fellow former pupil of Jan Pynas. He also knew
Thomas de Keyser (1596/7–1667), who painted his portrait, now known only from a print by Theodor Matham(1605/6–76).[7] Another good friend was Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598–1657), whose portrait Backer painted, alongwith that of Breenbergh’s wife.[8] Naturally, Backer also knew Govaert Flinck—his old friend from their Leeuwarden
years—with whom he regularly drew after live models, as evidenced by some fine studies of nudes that were clearly done
during shared sessions.
In the 1640s, together with Flinck and Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–70), Backer was in great demand among
Amsterdam’s elite, in large part because he had an exceptionally rapid manner of working that allowed him to produce
paintings more cheaply than his competitors. His swiftness led Joachim von Sandrart (1606–88) to recount in his Teutsche
Academie (1675) the oft-cited anecdote about a lady who traveled in the morning from Haarlem to Amsterdam to sit forBacker. He painted her portrait so quickly that she returned home that same evening with the completed likeness under herarm.[9] Backer was never short on success or acclaim during his lifetime. Between 1634 and 1644, he earned several
substantial official commissions, including the celebrated group portrait of the regentesses of the Amsterdam Orphanage,
two splendid militia pieces for the Kloveniersdoelen, and an allegorical scene for the chimneypiece of the New Gallery ofBuren Castle for Stadholder Frederick Henry.[10]Backer taught several gifted painters in Amsterdam, including Abraham van den Tempel (1622/3–72), the son of his own
master Lambert Jacobsz. Around 1640, Van den Tempel worked in Backer’s workshop, along with Adam Camerarius (d.
ca. 1666/86) of Groningen, Louis Vallée (d. 1653), and Jan van Noordt (1623/4–after 1676). In the late 1640s, thesestudents were succeeded by Jan de Baen (1633–1702), Jan van Neck (ca. 1635–1714), and Adriaen Backer(1635/6–1684), Jacob’s highly talented nephew, who, like his uncle, would become a leading portrait and history painter.
Jacob joined the Remonstrant congregation in Amsterdam in June 1651—three months before Govaert Flinck did so—anddied shortly thereafter, on 27 August 1651. He was buried a few days later in a family grave in the Noorderkerk.

- Piet Bakker, 2022© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Jacob Adriaensz Backer
Page 3 of 5Endnotes
1. On Jan Pynas as Backer’s first teacher, see Jaap van der Veen, “Jacob Backer, een schets van zijn leven,”in Jacob Backer (1608/9–1651), ed. Peter van den Brink (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum HetRembrandthuis; Aachen, Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) (Zwolle, 2008), 14–15.
2. Jaap van der Veen, “Jacob Backer, een schets van zijn leven,” in Jacob Backer (1608/9–1651), ed. Petervan den Brink (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Aachen, Suermondt-LudwigMuseum) (Zwolle, 2008), 16–17. See also Piet Bakker, “Een schilder en zijn netwerk: Lambert Jacobsz
en een nieuw beeld van de zeventiende-eeuwse schilderkunst in Friesland,” De Vrije Fries 88 (2008):
31–64.
3. Jasper Hilligers, “Lambert Jacobsz (c. 1598–1636) en zijn werkplaats: Atelierpraktijk in Leeuwarden
omstreeks 1630,” De Vrije Fries 89 (2009): 67–92.
4. Listed in the 1653 inventory of the possessions of Jacob’s half brother Dirck Backer is “Een tronie vansalige Jacob Backer van Wyb[rand] d’Geest” (A tronie of the late Jacob Backer by Wyb[rand] d’Geest);
see J.D. Wagner, “Nieuwe gegevens omtrent Jacob Backer,” Oud Holland 40 (1922): 33, no. 20.
5. Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Notarial Archives, Notary F. van Banchem, inv. 308, fol. 262r–v, 19 mei
1633, cited in Jaap van der Veen, “Jacob Backer, een schets van zijn leven,” in Jacob Backer(1608/9–1651), ed. Peter van den Brink (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Aachen,Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) (Zwolle, 2008), 18.
6. Albert Blankert debunked this myth in “Classicism and History Painting in the Late SeventeenthCentury,” in Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt, Albert Blankert et al.
(Exh. cat. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts; Amsterdam,Rijksmuseum) (Washington, D.C., 1980), 206. Broos described Backer’s purported pupillage withRembrandt as “a case of consistent misreading of a quote”; see B.P.J. Broos, “Fame shared is famedoubled,” in The Impact of a Genius: Rembrandt, His Pupils and Followers in the Seventeenth Century,
Albert Blankert et al. (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Waterman Gallery; Groningen, Groninger Museum)(Amsterdam, 1983), 48–49.
7. Theodor Matham, after Thomas de Keyser, Portrait of Jacob Backer, 1651 (Rijksmuseum,Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam). See also Arnold Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh derNederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen (Amsterdam, 1718–21; rev. ed. The Hague, 1753; repr.
Amsterdam, 1976), 1: 336.
8. Jacob Adriaensz Backer, Portret à l’antique of Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598–1657), 1644, and Portretà l’antique of Rebecca Schellingwou (ca. 1610–1667), Wife of Bartholomeus Breenbergh, ca. 1644 (bothAmsterdam Museum).
9. Joachim von Sandrart, Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künstevon 1675:
Lebem der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. Arthur R. Peltzer (Munich, 1925), 178; and© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Arnold Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen(Amsterdam, 1718–21; rev. ed. The Hague, 1753; repr. Amsterdam, 1976), 1: 336.
10. The Regentesses of the Amsterdam Orphanage, 1634 (Amsterdam Museum), see Peter van den Brink,ed., Jacob Backer (1608/9–1651) (Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis; Aachen,Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) (Zwolle, 2008), 100–103, no. A21; The Militia Company of Hendrick
Dircksz Spiegel, 1638 (present whereabouts unknown), see Kurt Bauch, Jacob Adriaensz Backer: Ein
Rembrandtschüler aus Friesland (Berlin, 1926), 3, no. 234; The Militia Company of Captain Cornelis deGraeff and Lieutenant Hendrick Lauwrensz, 1642 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), see Van den Brink,
Jacob Backer (1608/9–1651), 236, no. A92; and Allegory of the Republic, ca. 1644–45 (Stiftung
Staatliche Schlösser und Gärten, Schloss Oranienburg, Berlin), see Van den Brink, Jacob Backer(1608/9–1651), 146–47, no. A109.

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Weyermans, J.C. De Levens-beschrijvingen der Nederlandsche Konst-schilders en Konst-schilderessen.
The Hague, 1729, 2: 80–82.
Wagner, J.D. “Nieuwe gegevens omtrent Jacob Backer.” Oud Holland 40 (1922): 32–36.
Von Sandrart, Joachim. Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild-, und Mahlerey Künste von1675: Lebem der berümten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister. Edited by Arthur R. Peltzer. Munich, 1925,178.
Bauch, Kurt. Jacob Adriaensz Backer: Ein Rembrandtschüler aus Friesland. Berlin, 1926.
Wijnman, H.F. “De afkomst van Jacob en Adriaen Backer.” Oud Holland 43 (1926): 289–92.
Wijnman, H.F. “De schilder Jacob Backer.” Oud Holland 51 (1934): 135–36.
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Kok, Erna. “Culturele ondernemers in de Gouden Eeuw: De artistieke en sociaal-economische
strategieën van Jacob Backer, Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol en Joachim van Sandrart.” PhD diss.,© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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© 2024 The Leiden Collection