Portrait of Colonel Cornelis Backer

Wybrand Hendricks's Portrait of Colonel Cornelis Backer dates to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Hendricks was a Dutch painter and engraver who served as curator of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem and was active as a portraitist and still-life painter. His portraits document the Dutch civic and military elite during the tumultuous period of the Batavian Republic and the French occupation.

The oil on canvas shows the precise, restrained Dutch portrait tradition with careful rendering of the colonel's uniform and features. The controlled palette and dignified composition reflect the continuation of seventeenth-century Dutch portrait conventions into the Napoleonic era.