Brekelenkam biography

Quiringh Gerritsz van Brekelenkam was born in 1622. His parents were Gerrit Adriaens de Plutter and Magdalena Crijnen, both of whom were probably Catholic. His place of birth may have been Zwammerdam, a village near Alphen aan de Rijn, where his father worked as a tailor.¹ The painter thus grew up in an environment that most likely inspired him to paint the kinds of scenes on which he had a veritable patent and on which his present fame rests: the shops of tailors and cobblers, around twenty-five variants of which he produced from 1653 to 1664.² Brekelenkam may have received his artistic education in Leiden. According to an anonymous eighteenth-century biographer, he was “een discipel van Dou” (a pupil of [Gerrit] Dou), however since the similarity with the latter’s work is only superficial, an apprenticeship with Dou (1613–75) is now seriously doubted.³ Nonetheless, a previously overlooked signature on a document does point to a close connection with that Leiden master. When Dou accompanied his parents to draw up their will before a notary on 16 Febr