A special family reunion took place last week at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne.

Thanks to the financial support of the Friends of the Museum, the museum was able to acquire a child portrait of Joannes de Ruyter (1632) by Jan van Ravesteyn earlier this spring. This portrait depicts the brother of Daniel de Ruyter, whose portrait the museum purchased in 2023. With the recent acquisition, the two brothers are now reunited within the museum’s collection.

Curator Anja Sevcik is now appealing to the public for help: “We’ve reunited the brothers, but our ‘family’ search isn’t over. We are now seeking information on the whereabouts of the children’s grandparents’ portraits.”

De Ruyter Family

Joannes and Daniel were the sons of David de Ruyter (1580–1663) and Lucretia van der Meulen (1591–1672). David was a barrister of the High Court of Holland at The Hague and served as President of the Council of Brabant. Lucretia came from a well-known merchant family. The couple had also commissioned Van Ravesteyn to paint their own portraits. The portrait of the boys’ father, David, is currently located in the Honolulu Academy of Arts, while that of their mother, Lucretia, remains in a private collection.

Search for Grandparents

The paintings were once part of a grand portrait gallery, which the wealthy family used to express their dynastic pride and social ambition. This gallery also featured portraits of the boys’ grandparents, Jan de Ruyter and Elisabeth Montens, who were immigrants from Antwerp who settled in Cologne. While the grandparents’ portraits are known through low-quality photographs, their current location is unknown. The paintings were last documented in 1977 as being in an American private collection.

The museum is profoundly grateful to have reunited the children’s portraits in Cologne, the city of their father David’s birth. To conduct more in-depth research into the family’s history and to potentially organize an even broader family reunion display in the future, the museum is actively seeking information about the current location of the grandparents’ portraits.

If you have any relevant information about the whereabouts of these paintings, please contact Anja K. Sevcik at (sevcik@wallraf.museum).

For additional information on the newly acquired portrait of Joannes de Ruyter, please see Anja K. Sevcik, Kind, Kunst und Kugelspiel. Das neuerworbene Porträt des Daniel de Ruyter von Jan van Ravesteyn (1639), in: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 85, 2024, pp. 149-172.