Portrait of Cornelis Jacobsz de Boer, Captain in the Navy

Jan van Neck was a Dutch Golden Age painter specializing in still life compositions, particularly arrangements of flowers, fruits, and seafood rendered with meticulous detail and luminous color. Active in Amsterdam during the seventeenth century, he contributed to the development of the pronkstilleven, or ostentatious still life, a genre that celebrated rare and exotic goods flowing through Dutch maritime trade. His paintings demonstrate a characteristic attention to surface texture, reflected light, and the transient quality of perishable materials arranged against dark grounds.