Portrait of an elegant lady, bust-length, in a gown and black veil

The painter, draftsman, designer, architect, urban planner and poet Salomon de Bray is largely known today for his numerous depictions of religious and historical scenes but equally produced landscapes and a small but distinguished group of roughly thirty portraits. J.W. von Moltke memorably described de Bray's rare portraits as some of the artist's most original works (op. cit., p. 353). Though Salomon lived and worked exclusively in Haarlem, his success as a portraitist is illustrated by the high social status and geographic range of his known sitters, which included the humanist Hugo Grotius; Melchior Moretus, son of the famed Antwerp publishers Jan Moretus and Martina Plantin, and the Leiden burgomaster Johann Rippertsz. van Groenendyck.

Salomon’s portraits are generally small in scale and are frequently executed on oval or round supports that recall conventions established by Hendrick Goltzius in his engraved portraits of a few decades earlier. They equally suggest the influence of Haarlem’s greatest portraitist, Frans Hals, whom de Bray likely knew on account of his 1628 addition of the portrait of a small girl in Hals’ Portrait of the van Campen family in a landscape (early 1620s; Toledo Museum of Art). Indeed, von Moltke specifically referenced the Halsian qualities of the costly dress in this portrait, a work he praised for its ‘powerful, sure modelling’ (op. cit., p. 358). Toward the end of the 1630s, Salomon appears to have become increasingly aware of Rembrandt’s contemporary contributions to portraiture, evident here in the more harmonious play of light and shadow when compared with works like the dramatically lit Study of a young woman in profile of 1636 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).