Helst

Helst, BARTHOLOMEUS VAN DER, a Dutch painter, was born (according to tradition) at Haarlem in 1613. He was joint-founder in 1654 of the painters' guild of St Luke at Amsterdam, where he lived, and where he died in 1670. He attained great celebrity as a portrait-painter. Some of his pictures seem to bear traces of Franz Hals's influence. One of his works at Amsterdam, a 'Muster of the Burgher Guard,' with thirty full-length figures, was pronounced by Sir Joshua Reynolds to be 'the first picture of portraits in the world.' His later creations are inferior in merit to the pieces painted before 1650. Numerous paintings by him exist in European galleries.