Catharina Backer (1689 – 1766)

• Was an art collector and a painter from the Dutch Republic.
• Catharina Backer was born in Amsterdam in 1689.
• Catharina Backer married her first cousin, the merchant and art collector Allard de la Court of Leiden.
• Allard de la Court and Catharina Backer lived in a house on the Rapenburg in Leiden.
• Their children included Pieter Allardsz de la Court. 
• Catharina Backer died in Leiden in 1766.
• Together Allard de la Court and Catharina Backer owned one of the richest art galleries in the Northern Netherlands.
• Arnold Boonen painted their portraits in 1713 as part of a series of four that included her two sisters.
• Her father, Willem Backer, had collected specimens of natural history as well as paintings by artists such as Jan van Goyen, Jan Lievens, Frederik de Moucheron, and Jan van der Heyden.
• After her husband died in 1755, Backer inherited his art collection.
• She continued to show and add to the cabinet.
• In 1766, the year that she died, her estate sold much of her art collection with an auction catalog listing 215 items.
• The displayed painting is a crop from: Arnold Boonen, Catharina Backer,1713.
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