Willem Gruyter senior

Willem Gruyter, Sr., was a Dutch art dealer. He was born in Amsterdam in 1763. He established his business together with his son, Willem Gruyter junior (1798-1882). Gruyter’s son took over the business after his death.   In 1811, Gruyter, Sr., acquired _Nature morte _by Dutch painter Jan van der Heyden, at a sale organized in Amsterdam by Louis-Bernard Coclers (1741-1817), a Flemish collector and art dealer. Adolphe Schloss acquired the painting before his death in 1910. After the confiscation of the Adolphe Schloss collection in April 1943, German cataloguers assigned the label “Schloss 93” to van der Heyden’s Nature morte.

Literature: Hoogenboom, A. “Art for the market: contemporary painting in the Netherlands in the first half of the nineteenth century”, Simiolus: _Netherlandish Quarterly for the History of Art _vol. 22 nr. 3, (1993-1994), pp. 129-147; pp. 146. Link: https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/artists/Gruyter%2C%20Willem%20%28sr.%29