A daughter and a son (Constantijn?) of the artist

This 1672 canvas by Caspar Netscher at the Rijksmuseum depicts two children identified as the artist's own offspring — one definitively, one tentatively as Constantijn Netscher, who would himself become a painter. Double portraits of children were a distinctive category within Dutch portraiture, combining the genre painter's interest in childhood as subject with the documentary impulse of family portraiture. Netscher's depiction of his own children is an intimate work that differs from his aristocratic commissions in its informality and its emotional investment. The year 1672 — the Rampjaar — gives the image an inadvertent melancholy: children painted in a year of national catastrophe, their innocence implicitly set against the political violence unfolding around them. Constantijn Netscher would inherit his father's studio and continue his portrait practice.

Canvas, oil. The composition shows two children at half or three-quarter length, possibly engaged in play or holding objects that characterise their personalities or ages. The handling is warmer and somewhat freer than Netscher's formal commissions, reflecting the intimacy of the subject. Flesh tones are rendered with his characteristic luminous layering.