Claes van Beresteyn

Claes van Beresteyn (1627–1684), was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter who founded a hofje in his hometown of Haarlem.

This canvas was later sold in the 19th century to the Louvre as a Frans Hals painting, though later analysis by art historians have since disputed its attribution to Pieter Soutman.

On 5 January 1644 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke as a pupil of Salomon de Bray and became an etcher and landscape painter in the manner of Cornelis Vroom and Adriaen Hendriksz Verboom.

[1] His sister Elisabeth married his friend, the horse painter Pieter Cornelisz Verbeeck, who also painted a portrait of Claes.

Claes never married and lived in the house of his parents in the Zijlstraat, where he drew up his will on 18 June 1677 with the notary Gellinckhuizen to create a hofje for 12 elderly Catholic women.