Abraham de Vries (painter) has works in the collection National Gallery of Victoria
By the 1640s the Amsterdam art scene had come under the spell of Rembrandt's portrait art. Rembrandt's portraits emphasized the character and personality of his sitters through their physiognomy rather than by means of symbols and iconography. Abraham de Vries could also not resist the influence of this new painting style in his portraits.  The influence was so strong that his Portrait of a Dutch gentleman (1647, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) was for some time mistakenly attributed to Rembrandt.Abraham de Vries also painted so-called 'regents group portraits', i.e. group portraits of the board of trustees, called regents or regentesses, of a charitable organization or guild. An example of his original approach to this genre, which was very popular in Dutch Golden Age painting, is his Regents of the Burgerweeshuis orphanage in Amsterdam (1633, Amsterdam Museum).  Pictured in the group portrait are the regents who were responsible for the major renovation of the Burgerweeshuis orphanage in Amsterdam during the years 1630-1634. The arrangement of the composition is very original: de Vries split the regents in two groups: one group on the left-hand side is composed of standing figures and the other on the right-hand side consists of sitting figures. In the background in the middle of the composition a member of staff of the orphanage leads a small orphan girl into the room and thereby links up the two groups. Abraham de Vries may have been the first artist to introduce a child as an "attribute" in a regents group portrait. The portrait of the regents is still ‘’in situ’’ on the wall for which it was designed in the regent's room of the orphanage.
holds works in the collection