Dutch Painting

Paulus BOR
Amersfoort (?) c. 1600 (?) -Amersfoort 1669

Bor deserves to be better studied as so few of his pictures are at present known and they are all of good quality. He had a successful career and gained important commissions which included part of the decoration of the Huis Hanselaersdijk for Prince Frederick Henry in 1638.

The artist spent some three years in Italy (c. 1620–1623) where he stayed in Rome. He was thus able to assimilate not only the general Caravaggesque idiom but also some of the polish which Orazio Gentileschi always gave to his work. Bor then returned to Amersfoort, where he probably spent the rest of his career. The special quality of his painting is the mysterious facial expressions which he gives to his otherwise quite conventional pictures. He adopted a style which is familiar from artists like Jan van Biljert. He has remained, for historians and connoisseurs alike, an independent spirit.
from:
Christopher Wright, The Dutch Painters: 100 Seventeenth Century Masters, London, 1978