Welcome to our TEFAF 2025 Highlights

This exceptional portrait depicting the English polymath Nicholas Lanier (1588 - 1666) is unprecedented both for its conception and for the virtuosity of its execution, especially when viewed within the context of English painting at this time. The painting opens a window upon the culture and connoisseurship of an individual who was at the vanguard of the introduction of new Italian ideas both as a musician and as an art collector, into Jacobean England.

Apart from being one of the most influential court musicians of the seventeenth century, as agent for Charles I Lanier was responsible for the purchase of a large portion of the extraordinary art collection of the Dukes of Mantua. This purchase, which has been described as "the greatest single coup in the history of collecting by any purchaser, prince or patron", significantly added to the British royal collection.

This portrait, painted in 1613, depicts Lanier at the beginning of a long career in which he was at various times a courtier, spy, art dealer, painter, and the first ever Master of the King’s Musick. His distinctive likeness was later painted by Guido Reni, Sir Anthony van Dyck, Jan Lievens, and William Dobson, as well as by himself in a self-portrait.

We are honoured to be handling this extraordinary object again; The Weiss Gallery first owned this portrait 15 years ago, when we published a dedicated catalogue about the painting, so it is a great privilege to be handling it once again on the 400^th anniversary of his first buying trip to Italy to acquire paintings for Charles I.

This TEFAF, The Weiss Gallery is delighted to be reuniting two portraits, depicting father and son, which have not been seen together since 1885.

The father, Frederik van Alewijn, was the first in his family to join the prestigious regenten class in the Netherlands; he achieved this by marrying into the most powerful patrician families in Amsterdam, first to Agatha Geelwinck and secondly to Eva Bicker, the mother of Frederik's only child, Dirck. Frederik attained great success professionally and socially, becoming an alderman of the city and Captain of the Militia Company. With presumably large dowries from both marriages, he was able to authentically fashion himself as the quintessential Dutch regent, which included supporting young artists in Amsterdam and acquiring a country estate, Vredenburg in Beemster, both of which fitting of his new social class.

Frederik adorned his town and country residences with paintings by Abraham Bloemaert, Rembrandt, and Bartholomeus Spranger, but he also commissioned family portraits by the like of Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy and Dirck van Santvoort, as seen here, two of the most popular portrait painters then active in the city. Frederik was painted by both artists in his lifetime; his portrait by Pickenoy, now with The Weiss Gallery, was painted when he was still a bachelor in the mid-1630s, but he chose Santvoort for both of his marriage portraits (the first pair: Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam).

Frederik chose Santvoort to depict his only son, Dirck, in the guise of the progeny of a member of the Dutch elite. Dressed in an immaculate white silk dress, trimmed with expensive lacework and adorned by long strands of pearls, he is accompanied by a well-disciplined deerhound, which Dirck keeps in check with a riding crop: demonstrably he is a city boy who enjoys playing in the countryside.

These masterfully executed portraits remained together in the Alewijn family for nearly 250 years before being separated in 1885, when their direct descendent Dick Margarathus Alewijn, died without an heir. We are honoured to be reuniting them for the first time in 140 years in Maastricht this March.