George Vertue found the inscription which identified the sitters in this family portrait soon after its acquisition by Frederick, Prince of Wales. Balthasar Gerbier (1592-1667) was a French Huguenot born in the Dutch Republic who entered the service of the Duke of Buckingham in 1616 as artist and art-expert. Rubens lodged with Gerbier at York House during his London visit of 1629. The glimpse of river landscape in the background here shows the view from York House (including Lambeth Palace) and seems to have been copied from CWLF 63, 405356. Gerbier married Deborah Kip in 1627 and the couple had three sons and five daughters, whose dates of birth are not recorded. The Gerbier coat of arms, seen here on the flower pot, has three sheaves (or in French ‘gerbes’) of corn to pun on his name.

Like so many works from Rubens’s studio this one grew over a period of time, with separate pieces of canvas stitched on to the original piece. This ‘core’ lies at the top left extending across just to the right hand column and down to include the seat of Deborah Gerbier’s chair. This was probably painted in London c. 1629-30 and included only mother, three children and a baby, in a composition which appeared exactly as the painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (though this latter is of higher quality). A canvas was then stitched on below this composition to extend it downwards to the line of the top step. In this way the figures became full length and the artist (slightly less good than the first one but still probably a member of Rubens’s studio) took the opportunity of a larger format to squeeze in extra figures all round: Gerbier himself to the left and the two daughters in the lower right corner. The original area was also slightly re-worked at this stage, which can be dated to c. 1631-4). Finally strips of canvas were added to this composition (very narrow at the top and somewhat broader at the bottom to include the steps) and a single huge section to the right to accommodate everything to the right of (and including) the right hand column. This final campaign of c. 1638-41 in an inferior style (possibly by Gerbier himself) adds three more children and a coat of arms. The staggered painting process means that all the children seem to be the same age. This process may also explain why there are nine children instead of the eight recorded in Gerbier’s family: could it be that baby appears twice? This seem more likely than that the little girl in the black dress in the exact centre is a servant or dwarf, as has been suggested.

The account of the genesis of this painting makes it sound like a hotch-potch. It would perhaps be fairer to describe it as an elegantly informal and charmingly rambling image of a large middle-class family and an important and influential early example of a conversation piece.

The painting appears in Pyne's illustrated 'Royal Residences' of 1819, hanging in the Crimson Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace (RCIN 922142).