Self-portrait with a Hat

1652

Object data

black chalk, with grey wash, on vellum; framing line in brown ink

height 204 mm × width 170 mm

Inscriptions

signed and dated: lower right (on the column), in brown ink, C. Visscher / Ao. 1652

Condition

Laid down

Provenance

...; ? sale, Dionys Muilman (1702-72, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Bosch et al.), 29 March 1773 sqq., Album C, no. 143 (‘Cornelis Visscher. Het portret van Cornelis Visscher, oud zynde 17 Jaar [sic], gedekt met een grooten Hoed, uitvoerig en delicaat met zwart Kryt, Ao. 1652. hoog 7¾, br. 7½ duim [197 x 191 mm]’), fl. 75, to the dealer J. IJver, Amsterdam, or no. 145 (‘Een Jongelings Portret, met een groote hoed op ’t Hoofd, Zynde een Borststuk, uitvoerig met zwart Kryt, Ao. 1652. hoog 8, br. 6½ duim [203 x 165 mm]’), fl. 25, to the dealer J. IJver, Amsterdam;¹ …; from the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam, fl. 282, to the museum, 1900

Object number: RP-T-1900-A-4482

The artist

Cornelis Visscher (Haarlem 1628/29 - 1658 Amsterdam)

Little is known about his early life. Information regarding his birth is based on two surviving self-portraits, one from 1649 in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1343), and the other, dated 10 April 1653, in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1902-A-4624). He was presumably born in Haarlem, where he became a member of the Guild of St Luke in 1653. His father – who cannot be identified – must have been an artist as well, because in the admission book of the guild Visscher is described as ‘plaetsnijder en Meester outste zoon’ (‘engraver and the master’s oldest son’). Two younger brothers, Jan Visscher (1633/34-1712) and Lambert Visscher (1630/32-after 1690), also pursued artistic careers. The relationship between Cornelis and the relatively unknown painter Cornelis de Visscher (c. 1530-c. 1586) of Gouda is unclear. According to Van Mander, the latter was a skilled portraitist, but had some mental issues and died in a shipwreck on the North Sea.² Perhaps the same person can be identified with Cornelis de Visscher, whose money was managed (presumably on behalf of his under-age children) by the orphans’ board of Gouda because he was considered mentally ill; in 1622, the widow of Cornelis’ brother, the painter Gerrit Gerritsz. de Visscher II (c. 1559-before 1622), collected the money from the orphans’ board on behalf of Cornelis’ two nephews, her sons Gerrit de Visscher III (?-?), a goldsmith living in Gouda, and Barent de Visscher (?-?).³

Cornelis Visscher probably received his first artistic training from his father. Later he must have been apprenticed to the Haarlem painter, engraver and draughtsman Pieter Soutman (1593/1601-1657), with whom he collaborated on several print series in 1649/50. Shortly after his admission in the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem, he moved to Amsterdam. In the 1650s, he received numerous commissions for portrait drawings and engravings of Haarlem and Amsterdam scholars, clergymen and writers, including Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-H-P-41). One of his last commissions was an engraved portrait of Constantijn Huygens I (1596-1687) after a lost drawing by the sitter’s son Christiaan Huygens (1629-95), which was included as the frontispiece to Huygens’ poem book Koren-bloemen (1658) (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-OB-27.428). It was finished in the last months of 1657, when the artist was presumably suffering from ‘de steen’ (kidney stones). Visscher died the following year and was buried on 16 January in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam. Despite his short life – he was only twenty-eight years old when he died – Visscher left an extensive oeuvre, consisting of more than 100 drawings and some 185 prints.

Marleen Ram, 2019

References
R. van Eijnden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, 4 vols., Haarlem 1816-40, I (1816), pp. 71-77, IV (1840), pp. 96-97; P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, pp. 100-01; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Visscher, Cornelis (de)’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, XXXII, pp. 622-23; J. Hawley, ‘An Introduction to the Life and Drawings of Jan de Vissccher’, Master Drawings 52 (2014), no. 1, pp. 59-94; J. Hawley, ‘Cornelis Visscher and Constantijn Huygens’s Koren-bloemen’, Print Quarterly 32 (2015), no. 1, pp. 51-53

Entry

During his short career, Visscher regularly made self-portraits. Van Hall catalogued fourteen, of which seven are dated, between 1649 and 1657.⁴ The present drawing was made in 1652, when the artist would have been around twenty-three years old, based on the dated and inscribed Self-portrait of a year later in the museum’s collection (inv. no. RP-T-1902-A-4624). Compared to his earliest known self-portrait of 1649, in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1343), Visscher’s appearance has slightly changed. The young, somewhat insecure-looking boy has grown into a mature artist, who is looking confidently at us from under his broad-brimmed hat. A faint, pubescent moustache is now adorning his upper lip, and he has even grown a tiny goatee on his chin. Hawely suggested that this portrait was probably intended as some sort of visiting card, made by Visscher to establish himself as an artist and to impress future clients with his drawing skills.⁵

Visscher’s draughtsmanship, especially in his earlier drawings, betrays his initial training as a printmaker, presumably with his father and later with the Haarlem artist Pieter Soutman (1593/1601-1657). In the present work, Visscher used a fine network of parallel hatching, crosshatching and dots to render his face naturalistically. Moreover, he filled the background with dense hatching, as he was accustomed to do in his engravings. This type of drawing style is characteristic for a group of draughtsmen active in Haarlem in the 1650s and 1660s, which included, among others, Jan de Bray (1627-1697), Cornelis Bega (1631/32-1664), Leendert van der Cooghen (1632-1681), Dirk Helmbreeker (1633-1696) and Gerrit Berckheyde (1638-1698). Like Visscher, these artists are best known for their figure and portrait drawings in red and/or black chalk.⁶

Two copies of this drawing are known: one is in a private collection, Germany,⁷ and the other surfaced on the art market in 1930 and 1961.⁸

Bonny van Sighem, 2000/Marleen Ram, 2019

Literature

E.W. Moes, Oude teekeningen van de Hollandsche en Vlaamsche school in het Rijksprentenkabinet te Amsterdam, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam 1905-06, I (1905), no. 88; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), p. 796; A.M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols., coll. cat. London 1915-32, IV (1931), p. 95, under no. 1; H.F. Wijnman, ‘Visscher (Cornelis [de])’, in P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, 10 vols., Leiden 1911-37, X (1937), p. 1116; ‘Visscher, Cornelis, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXXIV (1940), p. 415; Drie eeuwen portret in Nederland, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1952, no. 240; H. van Hall, Portretten van Nederlandse beeldende kunstenaars, Amsterdam 1963, no. 4; G.C. Sciolla, ‘Disegni olandesi a Torino’, Arte Illustrata 6 (1973), p. 299; W. Wegner, Die niederländischen Handzeichnungen des 15.-18 Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., coll. cat. Munich (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung) 1973, I, p. 142, under no. 1029; G.C. Sciolla, I disegni di maestri stranieri della Biblioteca Reale di Torino, coll. cat. Turin 1974 (Manuele e saggi di bibliografia, vol. 8), p. 82, under no. 153; C. van Hasselt (ed.), Dessins flamands et hollandais du dix-septième siècle: Collections Musées de Belgique, Musée Boymans-van Beuningen Rotterdam, Institut Néerlandais Paris, exh. cat. Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1974, p. 163, under no. 118; C. van Hasselt, Rembrandt and his Century: Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century from the Collection of Frits Lugt, Institut Néerlandais, Paris, exh. cat. New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1977-78, p. 178, under no. 121; J. Bolten and A.T. Folmer-von Oven, Liberna Foundation: Catalogue of Drawings, Hilversum 1989, p. 210, under no. 119

Citation

B. van Sighem, 2000/M. Ram, 2019, 'Cornelis (II) Visscher, Self-portrait with a Hat, 1652', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.63632

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