Portrait of Johan van Clarenbeek, 1791

About the Work

This large watercolour drawing features a likeness from the wellknown group portrait “Regents of St Elisabeth’s Hospital” painted by the painter Frans Hals of Haarlem in 1641. It depicts the members of the board of a charity hospital. A century and a half later, van Noorde copied only one of the worthy gentlemen, Johan von Clarenbeek. The artist’s concern will probably have been less with the subject, however, than with a typical example of his predecessor’s portrait art. In his copy he also paid tribute to Hals’s loose, dynamic handling of the brush.