Gerard Reynst was a Dutch merchant, father of a museum curator, and later the second Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies

Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies

The Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies represented the Dutch rule in the Dutch East Indies between 1610 and Dutch recognition of the independence of Indonesia in 1949.The first Governors-General were appointed by the Dutch East India Company...

. All that is known of his early years is that he was born in Amsterdam.

Biography

In 1599 he became a merchant and ship-owner, as well as a founder-member and administrator of the Nieuwe or Brabantsche Compagnie

Brabantsche Compagnie

The Brabant Company , also known as the New Company was a precursor of the Dutch East India Company ....

 which, in 1600, became the Vereenighde Company of Amsterdam. This company then in 1602 merged into the Dutch East India Company

Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...

 (VOC).

On the request of his elders in the college of the Heren XVII (17 men), he became Governor-general of the Dutch East Indies in 1613 and left with 9 ships. The trip lasted 18 months, after which he took over command from Pieter Both

Pieter Both

Pieter Both was the first Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.Not much is known of his early years. In 1599, Both was already an admiral in the New, or Brabant Company. In that year, he traveled to the East Indies with four ships...

. On the way, he had already sent one of his ships to the Red Sea

Red Sea

The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...

 to start trade relations with the Arab

Arab

Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

s there. He died more than a year after arrival, having caught dysentery so that he could do little there, besides a few minor activities that were only intermittently successful.

Legacy

Reynst left his wife with seven children that she raised with her brother Jacques Nicquet. Among these were his son Gerrit or Gerard, Jan (who died collecting art in Venice), Weijntje became the mother of Isaac Coymans.

Gerard Reynst (1599-1658) lived in a house called De Hoop at Keizersgracht 209 that he later made into an art museum. His brother Jan Reynst

Jan Reynst

Jan Reynst was a Protestant Dutch merchant in Amsterdam and, with his elder brother Gerrit, an art collector. In 1625 he went to Venice...

 (1601-1646) was a collector of antique statuary and Italian paintings who was able to purchase the collection of the estate Andrea Vendramin in 1629, 230 sculptures and 140 paintings. These were sent to his brother in Amsterdam who published a selection of 112 items in the collection with the help of Gerard de Lairesse

Gerard de Lairesse

Gerard or Gérard de Lairesse was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist.Lairesse was born in Liège. His broad range of talent included music, poetry, and the theatre. He was perhaps the most celebrated Dutch painter in the period following the death of Rembrandt...

 as Signorum Veterum Icones, and opened his house to visitors. Amalia van Solms and Cosimo de Medici were some of the more notable visitors. Reynst never lived to see his book published, since he drowned in the canal in front of his house in 1658.