86

Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde (1636-1698)
The Elswout estate in Overveen. Painted in the 1660s. Panel, 52 × 80 cm.

The Netherlands Office for Fine Arts, inv.nr.NK 2580 (on loan to Frans Halsmuseum, cat.nr.464b). Seized by the Germans from the D. Katz gallery, Dieren. Formerly in the Cook collection, Richmond.

The owner of Elswout when this picture was painted was the Amsterdam merchant and agent of the Danish crown Gabriel Marselis, who acquired it half-built in 1654 and turned it into one of the most splendid country houses in the Republic. His money came mainly from the arms trade. Marselis's brother Pieter and his brother-in-law Thomas Kellerman had an iron mine and foundry on the Oka River not far from Moscow, the products of which he traded in Amsterdam. The Marselises operated on the principles of the arms merchant in G.B. Shaw's Major Barbara, who felt that it was unethical for a person in his position to decide who deserved weapons and who didn't. The family ethics led them to smuggle arms to the Spanish garrison of Antwerp when it was under siege by the French in alliance with the Republic, and to other activities which the historian of the Amsterdam regents characterized delicately as 'not exactly fair.' Marselis was an important patron of the arts, and Elswout a renowned meeting point for highly placed art-lovers. The draughtsman seen from the back on the left of the scene will have been at home there.

Elias 1903-1905, vol.2, pp. 871, 875. Exhib. cat. La vie en Hollande au XVIIe siècle, nr.47.