Background
His father, Paulus Paulusz Valckenburgh was a basket weaver from Geleen, his mother Geertje Lamberts a housewife.
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January Valckenburgh
Edit ProfileCareer
Valckenburgh began as a simple assistant-trader, but managed to make career up to one of the highest ranks, that of Director-General of the Dutch Gold Coast, twice. Born into a family of modest means, Valckenburg was baptized in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 2 April 1623. Valckenburgh became a commissioner in food supplies in Luanda in 1643 and returned to Amsterdam in 1649, after the recapture of Luanda by the Portuguese.
Valckenburgh returned to West-Africa in 1652 when he was installed as fiscal on the Gold Coast.
In Elmina, he had a relationship with mulatto Helena Correa, who was also the mistress of the previous Director-General. A son from this relationship was born in 1653.
Three years later, Valckenburgh himself became Director-General. After the end of his first term, Valkenburgh returns to Amsterdam in 1659, where he buys Keizersgracht number 113, becoming a neighbour of his Gold Coast colleague Hendrik Carloff.
On 5 September 1662, he leaves Amsterdam again, however, for his second term as Director-General on the Gold Coast.
Due to kidney problems, he is relieved of his duties on 2 June 1667, and a month later, on 8 July, Valckenburgh dies. lieutenant is the only known painting of a director of the Dutch West India Company. He is painted with a black house slave and with Fort George on the background.
Both portraits were bought by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2002.
