Biography

According to Van Mander in 1604, he was a promising young landscape painter who came from a good family in Haarlem, and thus painted as a hobby, rather than professionally. According to Houbraken, who echoes Van Mander's comment that he became a good landscape painter, he became an elder in the Dutch Reformed church before eventually becoming mayor of Haarlem. Houbraken reports that he died on August 5, 1617 aged 50.

This date makes it very confusing for art historians, because catalogs from the Frans Hals museum

Frans Hals Museum

The Frans Hals Museum is a hofje and municipal museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. The museum was founded in 1862 in the newly renovated former cloister located in the back of the Haarlem city hall known as the Prinsenhof...

 have claimed for decades that this is the same person sitting at the head of the table in Frans Hals

Frans Hals

Frans Hals was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture.-Biography:Hals was born in 1580 or 1581, in Antwerp...

' civic guard (schutterij

Schutterij

Schutterij refers to a voluntary city guard or citizen militia in the medieval and early modern Netherlands, intended to protect the town or city from attack and act in case of revolt or fire. Their training grounds were often on open spaces within the city, near the city walls, but, when the...

) group portrait Banquet of the officers of the St. Jorisdoelen, painted ten years after that in 1627.

According to the RKD he painted Italianate landscapes and died on August 5, 1627, aged 60. This would place the occasion of painting the group portrait as the changing of the guards after the death of its most distinguished member.