JACOBUS GERRITSEN STRYCKER (c. 1619-1687) AN ARTIST OF NEW AMSTERDAM By Charles X. Harris In the middle of the seventeenth century, when painting in Holland had arrived at its greatest period, there emigrated to New Amsterdam a Dutch portrait painter, Jacobus Gerritsen Strycker, who Was without doubt the most capable artist of New Netherland of that century. His color was good; his touch rather refined than vigorous; his gradation of light and shade was fine. His mental grasp of the essentials requis.te for painting a portrait reveal a genius, a genius thoroughly trained in the Dutch School, which stressed absolute fidelity to nature. Nothing has been found in the Netherlands concerning Strycker's family, early life, or training as a painter. When he emigrated in 1651, he was accredited to the town of Rouinen, in the province of Drenthe, which probably never had an art school. The Guilds of St. Luke, in the different cities of the Netherlands, have no record of him, yet his work so distinctly shows the influence of the foremost great masters of the Dutch school, that he must have been a pupil of one of them. His talent was of a more refined order than the bold brushwork of Frans Hals, but that he may have studied with one of Rembrandt's pupils, Backer, Bol, or Flinck, seems quite possible from the character of his work. Jacobus Strycker's elder brother, Jan, was born in 1617, calculating from the inscription on his portrait, so the probabilities are that Jacobus was not born before 1619. In January, 1643, the two brothers received from the States General of the Netherlands a grant of land in the colony of New Netherland, upon condition that they transport thither twelve families, at their own expense. There is no evidence that they carried out the terms of the agreement, and it was eight years later, in 1651, that Jacobus Strycker arrived in New Amsterdam. Jan followed in 1652. According to the ship's passenger list, Jacobus was accompanied by his wife, Ytie (Ida) Huybrechts, and two children, Gerrit and Altje (Alida or Elsie). His wife may have been related to the lady 83