Jan Six was an important cultural figure in the golden age of the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

.

Biography

The son of a well-to-do merchant family Six

Six family

Six is a Dutch well-known family from Amsterdam. The family originally comes from region of Lille in the North of France. During the Reformation, the family moved from Antwerp to Amsterdam and later belonged to the government of that city. Several family members were painted by Rembrandt. The name...

, Jan studied liberal arts and law in Leiden in 1634. He became the son-in-law of the mayor of Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

, Nicolaes Tulp

Nicolaes Tulp

Nicolaes Tulp was a Dutch surgeon and mayor of Amsterdam. Tulp was well known for his upstanding moral character.-Life:...

, in 1655, when he married Tulp's daughter Margaretha. Thanks to his father-in-law, he became magistrate of family law and various other appointments on the city council, eventually becoming mayor of Amsterdam himself in 1691 at the ripe age of 73.

Six was good friends with the poet Joost van den Vondel

Joost van den Vondel

Joost van den Vondel was a Dutch writer and playwright. He is considered the most prominent Dutch poet and playwright of the 17th century. His plays are the ones from that period that are still most frequently performed, and his epic Joannes de Boetgezant , on the life of John the Baptist, has...

 and the painter Rembrandt van Rijn, during the forties. Six remained a devotee of the arts all his life and wrote plays himself, the most famous being Medea, published in 1648 (with an etching by Rembrandt), and Onschult (Innocence) in 1662. In the same year the Dutch translation of Baldassarre Castiglione's Il libro del Cortegiano was devoted to Six.

Six Collection

His collection of paintings, drawings, etchings, and other artifacts (including many from his wife's family) were popular in his lifetime. This collection was eventually handed down generations later to the couple Lucretia Johanna van Winter (1785-1845) and Hendrik Six (1790-1847) whose extensive art collections were combined when they married in 1822 and are known collectively as the Six Collection, though 171 paintings were from the Van Winter family. Among the 76 Van Winter paintings collected by Lucretia Jans herself included a flower painting by Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch was a Dutch artist who specialized in still-life paintings of flowers, one of only three significant women artists in Dutch Golden Age painting, of whom Maria van Oosterwijk was also a flower painter, and Judith Leyster mainly not .She was born in The...

 that she bought in 1820, the The Milkmaid (Vermeer)

The Milkmaid (Vermeer)

The Milkmaid , sometimes called The Kitchen Maid, is an oil-on-canvas painting of a "milkmaid", in fact a domestic kitchen maid, by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer...

and the Serenade by Judith Leyster

Judith Leyster

Judith Jans Leyster was a Dutch Golden Age painter. She was one of three significant women artists in Dutch Golden Age painting; the other two, Rachel Ruysch and Maria van Oosterwijk, were specialized painters of flower still-lifes, while Leyster painted genre works, a few portraits, and a...

. The 171 paintings that Lucretia Jans took with her on her marriage, were only half of her father's extensive collection that itself had been known and put on display for a half century. The other half went to her sister Anna Louisa, who married Willem van Loon. A few of those paintings can still be seen in Museum Van Loon

Museum Van Loon

Museum Van Loon is museum, located in a canalside house alongside the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The museum is named after the family Van Loon that lived in the house from the 19th century.-History:...

, but the rest of the other half of the Van Winter collection was sold by Van Loon heirs in 1877 to Gustave baron de Rothschild (son of James Mayer de Rothschild

James Mayer de Rothschild

James Mayer de Rothschild was a French banker and the original founder of the French branch of the Rothschild family.-Biography:...

) in Paris.

The Six collection has been the subject of controversy in the Netherlands for decades, because though the house on the Amstel received subsidy from the Dutch government and was open to the public for visiting hours, the house was always also used as a home, and the number of visitors was limited. The dispute has been resolved and the top pieces are lent to the Rijksmuseum

Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam or simply Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, located on the Museumplein. The museum is dedicated to arts, crafts, and history. It has a large collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age and a substantial collection of Asian art...

several months every other year.