Study of a Woman, Bust Length, Wearing a Headdress, Facing Right

Haarlem, c. 1660 - c. 1662

Object data

red chalk; framing line in brown ink

height 134 mm × width 114 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso, in pencil: upper left, 3; centre, 5; lower centre, Bega
inscribed on verso: lower left, by Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein, in brown ink, N 743. (L. 2987)
stamped on verso: lower left, with the mark of the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135); lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

Watermark: Foolscap above three balls (fragment)

Condition

Brown spots

Provenance

…; ? collection Pieter de Hollander (1701-70), Haarlem; ? his sale, Haarlem (Jelgersma et al.), 14 August 1770, Album L, no. 1145 (‘Twee vrouwtjes, met Roodaart, door Bega’), fl. 1:16:-;¹ ? collection Frans van de Velde (?-1774), Amsterdam; ? his sale, Amsterdam (C. Ploos van Amstel et al.), 16 January 1775, Album K, no. 634 (‘Als boven [rood krijt]. Het eene is H.4 B.5 [102 x 127 mm], en het andere H. 5 ¼ B. 5 duim [119 x 127 mm]. Twee Stuks op één blad, zynde Vrouwe Hoofdjes, niet minder dan de voorgaande’), together with no. 633, with one other drawing, fl. 2:10:-, to ‘Yver’, Amsterdam; …; ? anonymous sale, Haarlem (J. van de Vinne), 8 September 1778 sqq., Album A, no. 121 (‘Twee Stuks Boerinnen, met roodaard, door C. Bega’); …; collection Johann Edler Goll von Franckenstein (1722-85), Amsterdam and Velzen (L. 2987); his son, Jonkheer Johan Goll van Franckenstein (1756-1821), Amsterdam and Velzen; his son, Jonkheer Pieter Hendrik Goll van Franckenstein (1787-1832), Amsterdam and Velzen; sale, Johan Goll van Franckenstein, Amsterdam (De Vries et al.), 1 July 1833 sqq., Album I, no. 24 (‘Twee Studiebeeldjes van Vrouwen, ter halver lijve. Fraai en uitvoerig, met rood krijt, door C. Bega’), fl. 750, to ‘Westenberg’; …; collection Jacob de Vos Jbzn (1803-78), Amsterdam (L. 1450); his widow, Abrahamina Henrietta de Vos-Wurfbain (1808-83), Amsterdam; sale, Jacob de Vos Jbzn, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 22 May 1883 sqq., no. 35, with inv. nos. RP-T-1883-A-270 and RP-T-1883-A-272, fl. 330, to the museum (L. 2228), with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt (L. 2135)

Object number: RP-T-1883-A-271

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Cornelis Bega (Haarlem 1631/32 - Haarlem 1664)

Baptized on 22 (?) January 1632, he was the youngest son of a prosperous Catholic family of artists in Haarlem. His father, Pieter Jansz Begijn (1600/05-1648), was a goldsmith, silversmith and sculptor, and his mother, Maria Cornelisdr (1611-1681), was the daughter of the renowned Mannerist artist Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (1562-1638), half of whose estate (gold, silver, paintings, drawings and prints) she inherited. Bega was almost certainly named for his maternal grandfather. His brother Dominicus Jansz Bagijn (?-1636) was a carver, and several of his paternal forebears were civic architects, including his grandfather, Jan Pietersz Bagijn (?-1628), his great-grandfather Pieter Pietersz Bagijn (?-1600); and his uncle Claes Pietersz Bagijn (1558-1632), whose son (i.e. Bega’s cousin) was the still-life painter Willem Claesz. Heda (1594-1680), who took the name of his mother. Another cousin, on his father’s side, was the decorative painter Pieter de Grebber (c. 1600-1652/53).

According to Houbraken, Bega studied under Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685).² This was presumably before 24 April 1653, when he embarked on a journey through Germany, Switzerland and France, in the company of fellow Haarlemmers Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne (1628-1702) and Joost Boelen (?-?).³ Bega was certainly back in Haarlem by September 1654, when he joined the Guild of St Luke, in which he was active for a decade, until 1664 (the year of his untimely death, probably from the plague).⁴ The costs of his expensive funeral at the church of St Bavo, Haarlem, were paid on 30 August 1664.⁵

As a painter, Bega was strongly influenced by the genre works of his teacher Ostade, but as a draughtsman he belonged to a distinctive group of Haarlem artists, including Gerrit Berckheyde (1638-1698) and Leendert van der Cooghen (1632-1681), who from the 1650s onwards developed a style of figure drawing – mostly single figure studies – characterized by highly precise delineation and sharp hatching.⁶ These studies were executed mostly in red chalk on white paper or black and white chalk on blue paper. Bega’s figure drawings can be recognized by their regular hatching, pronounced light and dark contrasts, and clearly demarcated forms.

Carolyn Mensing, 2019

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, I (1718), pp. 349-50; M.A. Scott, Cornelis Bega (1631/32-1664) as Painter and Draughtsman, 2 vols., Ann Arbor 1984 (PhD diss., University of Maryland); M.A. Scott in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, III, p. 495; M.A. Scott, ‘Bega, Cornelis’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Grove Dictionary of Art: From Rembrandt to Vermeer. 17th-century Dutch Artists, London 2000, pp. 16-17; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Cornelis Pietersz Bega’, in P. Biesboer and N. Köhler (eds.), Painting in Haarlem, 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 100-02; P. Biesboer, ‘Cornelis Bega (Haarlem, 1631-1664): Eine Biografie’, in P. van den Brink and B.W. Lindemann (eds.), Cornelis Bega: Eleganz und raue Sitten, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum)/Berlin (Gemäldegalerie) 2012, pp. 25-29

Entry

The collector Johan Edler Goll von Franckenstein assigned the very same inventory number to two different drawings by Bega of women portrayed bust length, both now in the Rijksmuseum, the present drawing and inv. no. RP-T-1883-A-270. This suggests that he considered the pair to be pendants or part of a series. Although the drawings correspond in format and subject-matter, they are executed on different paper and with different kinds of chalk. Both drawings, however, feature the same model. With her plump lips, large nose and somewhat bulging eyes, this woman was Bega’s favourite model. Not only does she reappear in a large number of his drawings, it has now been established that she features more often than previously assumed in some of his paintings.⁷ For instance, the Study of a Seated Woman, Half Length, Wearing a Headdress, in the George and Maida Abrams Collection, Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (inv. no. 25.1998.93),⁸ closely resembles the figure in a painting in a private collection in Austria, reportedly dated 1661. In the case of the present drawing, it was used for the painting Tavern Scene with a Peasant Family and an Innkeeper’s Wife, now in the Museum Gouda (inv. no. NK2466).⁹ There the woman’s headdress is draped slightly differently, though most other details correspond.

The same model posed for both Bega and Berckheyde during at least one joint drawing session; Bega drew her, standing in front of her and slightly to her left, in a sheet in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 5112),¹⁰ while Berckheyde rendered her almost in profile from her left side, in a study in the Witt Collection, Courtauld Gallery, London (inv. no. D.1952.RW.2174).¹¹ A somewhat less gifted third artist was also present at this session. He portrayed the woman from virtually the identical vantage as Berckheyde in a drawing in the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig (inv. no. NI 2987).¹² The drawing in Leipzig might be a copy after the drawing by Berckheyde; however the details are different. The same model most likely also features in the Study of a Standing Woman, Seen from the Front by Berckheyde in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1883-A-265).

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Carolyn Mensing, 2019

Literature

M. Schapelhouman, Het beste bewaard. Een Amsterdamse verzameling en het ontstaan van de Vereniging Rembrandt, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1983, no. 5 (with incorrect inv. no.); M.A. Scott, Cornelis Bega (1631/32-1664) as Painter and Draughtsman, 2 vols., Ann Arbor 1984 (PhD diss., University of Maryland), pp. 88-89, 246, 372, no. D2 (with incorrect inv. no.), fig. 124; P. van den Brink and B.W. Lindemann (eds.), Cornelis Bega: Eleganz und raue Sitten, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum)/Berlin (Gemäldegalerie) 2012, no. 37; C. Melzer and J. Keddies, Kühles Licht und weite See: Niederländische Meisterzeichnungen und ihre Restaurierung, exh. cat. Bremen (Kunsthalle Bremen) 2018, p. 142, under no. 72

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2000/C. Mensing, 2019, 'Cornelis Pietersz. Bega, Study of a Woman, Bust Length, Wearing a Headdress, Facing Right, Haarlem, c. 1660 - c. 1662', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.27405

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