Strikingly, Wijck's depictions of alchemists most closely resemble the professional class to which he himself belonged. That he would have recognized and elected to represent such a resemblance appears as no coincidence, particularly within the context of Haarlem. For Wijck, life in Haarlem may have presented not only models for artistic selectivity, but the context by which to connect alchemical work to his own practices. Wijck was embedded in a community of artists and fellow artisans who used alchemical knowledge in their discrete disciplines, as well as a community of patrons and collectors whose professions relied on chemical knowledge and theory. Though Wijck's pictures present a discipline that was often thought of as hermetic, it is clear he was deeply embedded within his own community and responsive to contemporaneous artistic models—including images of alchemy. Haarlem's unusually high volume of labor imagery was joined by a sizeable number of alchemical scenes, produced by some of the city's most prominent artists and artistic dynasties. Alchemy was not only a highly suitable subject for painters, but appears to have been a quintessentially suitable subject for Haarlem's painters. Local artists were surpassed in alchemical pictures only by the large and prolific studio of their Flemish counterpart, David Teniers the Younger, and his countless copyists. This “clustering” suggests alchemy was an artistic subject of significant local importance, and should be re-evaluated as a vital part of Haarlem's innovative artistic legacy.