Jacob Adriaensz Backer (1608–1651)

• Was a Dutch Golden Age painter.
• Backer was born in Harlingen, Netherlands, but his father moved in 1611 to Amsterdam, after his wife died.
• Between 1627 and 1633 he and Govert Flinck, both Mennonites, were pupils of Lambert Jacobsz in Leeuwarden.
• In 1633 Backer returned to Amsterdam.
• Backer never married, never bought a house, and might have lived with his brother or nephew Adriaen Backer. 
• He died in Amsterdam, in his early forties.

• His extreme quickness has been particularly noticed, and Joachim von Sandrart wrote in his Teutsche Academie that a woman came from Haarlem and went home the same day, in which short period of time her portrait, cuffs, fur, collar, together with the rest of her dress and both hands, was handsomely completed in a life-sized half-length.

• Backer joined Rembrandt's studio between 1632 and 1634, was one of the most independent of his pupils.

• He was buried in the Noorderkerk. 

• He produced about 140 paintings in twenty years.

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