Portrait of Cornelia Reynst (1615-1708), seated, three-quarter-length, in a white silk dress with a gold-embroidered shawl and pearl earrings, necklace and head-dress, in a garden by a fountain

Pieter Nason was one of the leading portraitists in Holland in the mid- 17th Century. His modern style reflected a synthesis of the influences of Sir Anthony van Dyck and Gerrit Honthorst, comparable to Adriaen Hanneman. Like Hanneman he found employment among the visiting English court in exile, making at least one portrait of Charles II which was engraved several times in the 1660s; and two portraits of royalist courtiers (National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 4978 and 5235).

The sitter married Hendrik van der Does in 1644, a prosperous merchant and later burgermeister of Gorinchem [Gorkum]. In 1665, the same year that Nason painted the present picture, he also made a smaller pair of the couple in less ostentatious surroundings, satisfying both the grandiose and the more intimate requirements of his patrons.