Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 121.5 cm × width 89.5 cm
outer size: depth 7.8 cm (support incl. SK-L-2105)
Dirck van Santvoort
c. 1644
oil on canvas
support: height 121.5 cm × width 89.5 cm
outer size: depth 7.8 cm (support incl. SK-L-2105)
Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Judging by the crack pattern the bars of the original strainer were approx. 6 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The single, warm reddish-brown ground extends up to the tacking edges. It consists of yellow earth pigment, glass-like particles, some white and a few fine dark red, bright orange and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing A grey-black underdrawing in a liquid medium, delineating the folds in the yellow-golden cloth in the lower right corner, is visible with the naked eye and infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up the tacking edges. A dark brown, initial lay-in was left exposed locally, for example in the background, the shadows of the face and the darker areas of the hair. The dress, however, was left in reserve in the lay-in, the colour of the ground serving as its base. The painting was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, leaving most elements reserved in the background. The dress was composed of warm pinkish tones on top of which cool whites were scumbled to create a satiny appearance. The shepherd’s staff and flowers were painted over the finished skirt, and the yellow-golden fabric extends partially over it. The flesh tones were thinly brushed over the first lay-in. The paints were applied with dry brushstrokes, with slight impasto in the highlights. Coarse bluish pigment particles are visible with the naked eye in the gold-like cloth, and may have served as a filler or drier.
Michel van de Laar, 2024
P. D’Imporzano, Implications of Lead Isotope Variation in Lead White from 17th Century Dutch Paintings, diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 2021, p. 106; P. D’Imporzano et al., ‘Time-Dependent Variation of Lead Isotopes of Lead White in 17th Century Dutch Paintings’, Science Advances 7 (2021), pp. 1-14, esp. pp. 5-7 (see doi 10.1126/sciadv.abi5905)
Good. There is an old, repaired tear in the upper right corner. The dark colours have darkened more than the lighter ones. Moating can be seen around areas of impasto.
A dark brown pear scotia frame1
For both the present painting (SK-A-1311) and its pendant (SK-A-1310)
? Commissioned by the sitters’ uncle, Frederik Dircksz Alewijn (1603-1665), Amsterdam; ? his probate inventory, 18 December 1665, in the central room of the house at 182 Herengracht, Amsterdam, nos. 37a, 37b, as Anonymous (‘2 schilderije contrefeijtsels van de kinderen t eene een van Martinus Allewijn en tander van de nicht de Bij’);2 ? his son, Dirck Alewijn (1644-1687), Amsterdam; ? his son, Dirck Alewijn (1682-1742), Amsterdam and Beemster; ? his son, Frederik Alewijn (1737-1804), Amsterdam and Beemster; ? his son, Frederik Alewijn (1775-1817), Hoorn and Beemster; his son, Dirk Margarethus Alewijn (1816-1885), Hoorn and Medemblik;3 his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 16 December 1885, nos. 79, 80, fl. 845, to the dealer Muller, as Abraham van Santvoort;4 from whom, fl. 971.75, to the museum, 1885
Object number: SK-A-1311
Copyright: Public domain
Dirck van Santvoort (Amsterdam 1609 - Amsterdam 1680)
Dirck van Santvoort was baptized in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk on 6 December 1609. His immediate family included several painters, for he was the son of the Amsterdam landscapist Pieter Dircksz Bontepaert (van Santvoort) and Truytgen Pieters, the grandson of Pieter Pietersz on his mother’s side, and thus the great-grandson of Pieter Aertsen. It is not known who his teacher was, but it is only logical to assume that it was his father. Van Santvoort may have been active in Rembrandt’s studio in the first half of the 1630s, when the master was collaborating closely with the art dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh. It is also possible that he worked not for Rembrandt but for Uylenburgh. This may explain why he did not join the Amsterdam Guild of St Luke until 1636. In 1641 he married Baertgen Pont, and after her death Trijntje Rieuwertsdr in 1657. Various documents relating to financial transactions and property investments show that Van Santvoort had no money worries. He is regularly recorded as an appraiser of paintings, sometimes together with Uylenburgh’s eldest son Gerrit, who lived near him in Breestraat. Van Santvoort was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk on 9 March 1680.
His earliest dated picture, A Boy Dressed as a Shepherd of 1632, which is the companion piece to A Girl Dressed as a Shepherdess,5 features a pastoral figure in the manner of Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp. A Christ at Emmaus dated 1633 shows that in his rare histories Van Santvoort took his lead from Rembrandt,6 some of whose works he copied. However, from the early 1630s on he mainly made his name with likenesses of burghers, which owe much to the art of Cornelis van der Voort and Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy. These paintings are adequately executed in a polished yet sometimes slightly naive style without much in the way of embellishment. They are largely distinguished by his rendering of lace. In addition to major commissions for group portraits, such as The Regentesses and Housemistresses of the Spinning House of 16387 and The Directors of the Serge Cloth Industry of 1643,8 it is Van Santvoort’s likenesses of children that display his gifts to best effect. His last dated works, which include the Portrait of Otto van Vollenhoven with his Wife Appolonia Bogaert and their Daughter Maria,9 are from 1645, so he was active as a painter for only about a decade. He is recorded as a warden of the Amsterdam Guild of St Luke in 1658 and again in 1672, but that could have been due to his occupation as an art dealer.
Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024
References
A.D. de Vries, ‘Biografische aanteekeningen betreffende voornamelijk Amsterdamsche schilders, plaatsnijders, enz. en hunne verwanten’, Oud Holland 3 (1885), pp. 55-80, 135-60, 223-40, 303-12, esp. p. 312; ibid., 4 (1886), pp. 71-80, 135-44, 215-24, 295-304, esp. p. 73; N. de Roever, ‘Pieter Aertsz: gezegd Lange Pier, vermaard schilder’, Oud Holland 7 (1889), pp. 1-38, esp. pp. 35-38; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, p. 217; ibid., III, 1917, pp. 768-70; ibid., VI, 1919, p. 1884; Stechow in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXIX, Leipzig 1935, pp. 453-54; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Enkele adressen van zestiende eeuwse kunstschilders’, Maandblad Amstelodamum 74 (1987), pp. 1-7, esp. p. 5; J. van der Veen, ‘Het kunstbedrijf van Hendrick Uylenburgh in Amsterdam: Productie en handel tussen 1625 en 1655’, in F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburgh en Zoon: Kunst en commercie van Rembrandt tot De Lairesse, 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2006, pp. 117-205, esp. p. 137; E.J. Sluijter, Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam 1630-1650, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2015, pp. 293-96; Van der Molen in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, CI, Munich/Leipzig 2018, pp. 157-58
This painting and its pendant of a young boy (SK-A-1310; also fig. a) have been regarded since the early twentieth century as the portraits of Martinus (1634-1665) and Clara Alewijn (1635-1674), the eldest son and daughter of the Amsterdam cloth merchant and dealer in Indonesian goods Abraham Alewijn and Geertruid Hooftman.10 Both works were auctioned in 1885 by a direct descendant of their father’s elder brother Frederik Dircksz Alewijn (1603-1665).11 The girl was at the time thought to be Anna Alewijn, which is also the name given on a nineteenth-century label on the reverse of that picture. However, in a manuscript annotation in a copy of the sale catalogue she is recorded as Clara Alewijn,12 and that is how she has been identified in the museum since 1903. The back of the boy’s portrait also bears a label, indicating Martinus’s name and details.13 He is said to be 10 years old and Anna 9.
The boy has been correctly recognized, but the girl is probably someone else altogether.14 Upon the death of the aforementioned Frederik Dircksz Alewijn, who sat himself for Dirck van Santvoort in 1640,15 an inventory was made up of his collection of pictures, prints and drawings in the house at 182 Herengracht in Amsterdam. It includes ‘2 paintings, likenesses of the children, the one of Martinus Alewijn and the other of cousin De Bye’.16 This is the only mention of a portrait of Martinus in the list, and since the two are recorded as a pair it is very unlikely that the reference is not to the present works by Van Santvoort. This means that Martinus is accompanied not by his sister Clara but by a first cousin who can be identified as Anna de Bye (1636-1713).17 She was the eldest daughter of Arent de Bye (1600-1652), Lord of Wayenstein, burgomaster of Zaltbommel and dyke-reeve of the Bommelerwaard in Gelderland,18 and Margaretha Bicker (1614-?), the sister of Frederik Dircksz Alewijn’s second wife Eva Bicker. Around 1644, when the girl’s portrait must have been painted,19 Anna de Bye was about 8 years old and that certainly matches her apparent age in the picture. This identification would also explain why the label on the back of that likeness wrongly says that she is Anna Alewijn, which is not all that wide of the mark.20
It has been suggested that there is a connection between these pastoral children’s portraits and the fact that Frederik Dircksz Alewijn built Vredenburgh, his country seat, between 1643 and 1649.21 It is not at all clear that both works proclaim a love of the outdoor life, but given their provenance they were indeed probably ordered by him. His eldest son Dirck Alewijn (1644-1687) was baptized on 1 September 1644, and his birth may have been the reason to commission two pastoral portraits of his eldest cousins. One of the same type by Van Santvoort is identified as that of Dirck in the 1885 sale catalogue,22 but Ekkart dated it to 1640-41, so before Dirck was born, and considered Martinus’s younger brother Abraham a suitable candidate.23
The grounds of the two Rijksmuseum portraits do not match, and there are also differences in technique.24 The girl takes up less of the picture surface than does the boy, which may indicate that the paintings were conceived not so much as companion pieces but were commissioned as two autonomous works. However, the similar dimensions, backgrounds and frames suggest that the artist did regard them as complementary.25 The technical disparities may be due to the fact that the children lived in different places, Martinus Alewijn in Amsterdam and Anna de Bye in Zaltbommel. Interestingly, the composition of the ground in Martinus’s portrait seems identical to that of Van Santvoort’s Directors of the Serge Cloth Industry of 1643,26 which was definitely executed in Amsterdam.
Dirck van Santvoort, Aelbert and Jacob Cuyp and Wybrand de Geest were the main exponents of the pastoral child’s portrait, a genre that was extremely popular for several decades after the late 1630s.27 In these two pictures the artist posed the young sitters against a landscape background (which is far more convincingly related to the foreground in the girl’s likeness). Their colourful, fancy clothing and the allegorical accessories create an Arcadian mood.28 The girl is wearing a costly, pink, satin dress, and holds a shepherd’s staff and a cord in her hand with which she is making a garland of flowers like the one around her left forearm. Lying on the ground at the front are attributes of Diana, goddess of the hunt, which will also refer to the girl’s status. Only her coiffure, which is in the latest fashion, rises above the timeless nature of her attire. Martinus’s painting has the same connotations. He also holds a shepherd’s staff, and is accompanied by a greyhound, a classic hunting dog.29 In the foreground lie a cap with three colourful plumes and a horn below it.30 Lambs often serve in pastoral children’s portraits as allusions to childhood innocence, and are also associated with the first ten years of a person’s life.31
Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
For both the present painting (SK-A-1311) and its pendant (SK-A-1310)
A. McNeil Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and its Audience in the Golden Age, Montclair 1983, pp. 11, 17, 64, 171-72; Ekkart and Kuus in J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, pp. 186-89, nos. 43-44
1887, p. 152, no. 1284 (as Portrait of Anna Alewijn); 1903, p. 239, no. 2132 (as Portrait of Clara Alewijn); 1934, p. 257, no. 2133 (as Portrait of Clara Alewijn); 1976, p. 499, no. A 1311 (as Portrait of Clara Alewijn)
Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024, 'Dirck van Santvoort, Portrait of a Young Girl, probably Anna de Bye (1636-1713), c. 1644', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5376
(accessed 9 November 2024 02:59:00).