Dutch Painting

Hendrick VAN DER BURCH
Honselaarsdijkor Naaldwijck 1627–Lieden (?) 1665 or later

Hendrick van der Burch was baptized in Naaldwijck, a village about nine miles east of Delft, on June 27, 1627. His parents were the candlemaker Rochus Hendricksz van der Burch and Dicwertj. Jochmsdr van Vliet, who were living in Honselaarsdijk (nextdoor to Naaldwijck) at the time. Hendrick had at least four sisters: Anna (who married the silversmith Barent Jacobsz Gast), Jacomina, Maria, and Trijntge. Jannetge de Hooch, wife of the painter Pieter de Hooch, has also been identified as a sister or a stepsister of Van der Burch. In 1633 the family moved to Voorburg, a small town near Delft and The Hague, and sometime later relocated to Delft, where they acquired a house on the Binnenwatersloot. Van der Burch is first documented in Delft in 1642. He must have received his training as a painter there, although the name of his teacher is not known. On January 25, 1649, he joined the local Guild of Saint Luke. It is interesting that Van der Burch, although born outside Delft, paid a registration fee of only 6 guilder, instead of the 12 guilders usually charged to outsiders. Three years later on August 5, 1652, he signed a notarial document with Pieter de Hooch—the earliest evidence of De Hooch's residence in Delft.

By September 4, I655, Van der Burch had moved to Leiden, where he married Cornelia Cornelisdr van Rossum in November of the same year. They had five children; their son Rochus (b. I658) also became a painter. In January 1666 the couple rented a house on Leiden's most prestigious canal, the Rapenburg, directly across from the university. Although the date of the artist's registration with the Leiden guild is not known, Van der Burch was a member paying regular dues. By May 1659 he and his family had moved to Amsterdam. Documents from 1661 place Van der Burch again in Leiden. The last surviving record that mentions Van der Burch refers, however, to his paying dues to the guild in Delft in 1664. The date of his death remains unknown. His last child was baptized in Leiden in 1666, which suggests 1665 as the earliest possible year of his demise.

from:
Walter Lidetke, Vermeer and the Delft School, New Haven and London, 2001