Biography

According to Houbraken he painted a very good Queen of Sheba, but he painted mostly still lifes.

His surviving paintings today are mainly small historical allegories and still lifes with metal objects. Though he has been considered in the past by (some) 19th century historians to have been a pupil of Rembrandt, he in fact lived and worked in Haarlem

Haarlem

Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...

, not Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

. He was registered as a painter in Haarlem in 1631 and in 1634 as a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke

Haarlem Guild of St. Luke

The Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke was first a Christian, and later a city Guild for a large number of trades falling under the patron saints Luke the Evangelist and Saint Eligius.-History:...

. The confusion about being a pupil of Rembrandt comes from an incorrect reading of Houbraken, who mentions him in the same paragraph along with two other painters; a painter by the last name of Van Terlee, and the much younger Willem Drost

Willem Drost

Willem Drost was a Dutch Golden Age painter and printmaker of history paintings and portraits who died young.-Biography:...

, who did live in Amsterdam as a young man, and was in fact a pupil of Rembrandt there.

De Poorter later influenced Hendrick Martensz Sorgh.