Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten

Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten (1630–1700) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of still lifes and genre scenes.

The proposal.

He was a student of Frans Hals and married Hals' daughter Adriaentje in 1654. He lived with his wife in Amsterdam before moving to London in 1666 where he later was wounded in the hip during the great fire of London, an injury that caused him to walk with a limp the rest of his life.

In his biographical sketch of Roestraten, Houbraken relates a popular anecdote that his wife Adriaentje as a baby once pooped on Adriaen Brouwer, who was a young pupil of Frans Hals at the time and had been asked to babysit. When the baby pooped all over him, he promptly pulled down his pants and pooped on the baby. When Mrs. Hals came in and asked what he was doing, he responded that they were shitting each other.

Houbraken claims he was so good at painting portraits and silver, that Sir Peter Lely made a deal with him to stick to painting silver rather than portraits (which was his specialty) and this Roestraten did, earning forty to fifty pounds sterling for a piece. When his first wife died he remarried, but died soon afterwards. He influenced Christian Berentz and Robert Robinson.