Singed JT and dated 1673 at lower left.

Selected Museum Collections:

The Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu, Romania; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, USA; the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK ; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, USA; the Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem, the Netherlands; the Harvard University Art Museums, Boston, USA; the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia; the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, Germany; the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, Austria; Musée du Louvre, Paris, France; the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, Italy; the National Museum, Warsaw, Poland; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; the Stedelijk Museum ‘De Lakenhal’, Leiden, the Netherlands; the Szepmuveszeti Muzeum, Budapest, Hungary and the Watford Museum, Watford, UK.

Jacob Toorenvliet trained initially in Leiden under his father Abraham (c.1620-1692), a drawing master and glass painter, who is better known as the first teacher of Frans van Mieris and Matthijs Naiveu. Jacob had a precocious talent for painting and it is known that he was already active as a portraitist by the time of his fifteenth birthday. In 1670 he left for Rome and from 1673 he lived and worked in Venice where Houbraken records that he met and married his wife. He is thought to have spent time in Vienna in the late 1670s and by 1680 was back in Holland. He returned to Leiden in 1682.

Toorenvliet has painted several music lessons or groups who are making music. Especially the Music Lesson in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is interesting in this regard, since not only the subject, but also the employed palette is very similar to the present painting.

Jacob Toorenvliet (1640-1719) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of genre works.

Jacob Toorenvliet also known as (Name variations): Toornvliet, Jacob; Torenvliet, Jacob; Jason (1640-1719); Monogrammist J.T.vliet; Vliet, J.T.