Object data
black and white chalk, on blue paper
height 533 mm × width 420 mm
Aleijda Wolfsen (attributed to), Caspar Netscher (attributed to)
Portrait of a Family
1663 - 1684
Inscriptions
-
stamped on verso: lower centre (partially trimmed), with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Provenance
…; from the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam, fl. 1, to the museum (L. 2228), April 1886
Object number: RP-T-1886-A-605
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Aleida Wolfsen (Zwolle 1648 - Zwolle 1692)
She was born on 24 October 1648, the daughter of the wealthy burgomaster of Zwolle, Hendrik Wolfsen (1615-1684), and his wife, Aleijda Verwers (1626-1665). The family moved to The Hague in 1657, and she remained there for a decade until her marriage in Rijkswijk on 5 October 1667 to another burgomaster of Zwolle, Pieter Soury (1645-1695).1 Following her marriage to Soury – by whom she had ten surviving children2 – the couple lived for a year in The Hague (1667), before moving into the former Wolfsen family home in Zwolle (1667-72 and 1674-92), which they kept, even after their move back to The Hague (1672-73 and 1683) and to Amsterdam (1673-74). Aleida is generally assumed to have studied with Caspar Netscher (c. 1635/36-1684) in The Hague around 1670,3 but dated portraits from 16634 and 16675 suggest that such training, if it occurred, took place before her marriage. She was certainly close to Netscher in later years, serving as a witness to the baptism of two of his children (in 1673 and 1678). She practised as a portrait painter in the manner of her presumed teacher, undertaking commissions from family and friends, and was nicknamed the ‘Penseel-Princes’ (‘Brush princess’) by Jacob Campo Weyerman. Her latest signed work is from 1691, the Portrait of a Young Woman in the Stichting Het Vrouwenhuis, Zwolle. She died on 25 August 1692 in childbirth with her fifteenth baby, a boy called Coenraad Willem.6
Jane Shoaf Turner, 2025
References
J.C. Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, IV (1769), p. 336; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), p. 898; ; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXXVI (1947), p. 225; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, p. 361; C.P. Sengers et al., Lexicon van Noord-Nederlandse kunstenaressen, circa 1550-1800 Hilversum 1998, p. 174; S. van Cauwerberge et al., Elck zijn waerom. Vrouwelijke kunstenaars in België en Nederland, 1500–1950 Ghent 1999, pp. 188-89; M.E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting, Doornspijk 2002 (Aetas Aurea: Monographs on Dutch & Flemish Painting, vol. 16), pp. 121-22; E. Wolleswinkel, ‘Er was eens een penseelprinses... en zij heette Aleijda Wolfsen’, Jaarboek Die Haghe 2015, pp. 72-95; https://rkd.nl/artists/85402; https://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Wolfsen
Entry
The sheet entered the collection as anonymous (‘onbekend’) but was later associated with Caspar Netscher (c. 1635/36-1684), albeit with a question mark. It is, however, directly related to a painting, Portrait of an Unknown Family (fig. a), which appeared in 1988 on the art market as attributed to Caspar’s son Constantijn Netscher (1668-1723),7 but which has since been given to Aleida Wolfsen,8 who was closely associated with the Netscher family in the 1670s (although a formal apprenticeship is not documented. Not only do the facial features correspond – but also the costumes, accessories and jewellery (from the husband’s armour and cravat to the wife’s pearl necklace and earring to the feathers worn by one of the daughters. Given the fact that the drawing focusses entirely on the sitters, with only the slightest hint of the curtain to the left, it may have been made as a preliminary sketch rather than as a ricordo of the finished painting. This may also explain why, for instance, the pattern of the mother’s dress is only suggested at her bodice, whereas, in a ricordo one would expect it to have been completely rendered.
The present sheet would be the first drawing to be attributed to this poorly studied artist, but the proposal makes sense stylistically. It features the same strikingly clean-cut shapes, large eyes and slender noses encountered in such paintings by Wolfsen as Portrait of a Lady,9 or another Portrait of a Lady.10 Aleida’s penchant for ‘strongly delineated features’ was singled out by Netscher scholar M.E. Wieseman.11 Wolfsen may also have been responsible for inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2282, a copy after a drawing by Caspar Netscher.
Annemarie Stefes, 2018
Citation
A. Stefes, 2018, 'attributed to Aleijda Wolfsen and attributed to Caspar Netscher, Portrait of a Family, 1663 - 1684', in J. Turner (ed.), (under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200146208
(accessed 10 December 2025 10:34:29).