Portrait of Elisabeth Pietersdr Kessels (1640-1717)

1671

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 108 cm × width 89.2 cm

Inscriptions

signature, date and inscription, with ligated monogram, upper left (A and E ligated): AETATIS. 31. / AN.NO. 1671 / cVE

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. The top, left and right tacking edges have been partially trimmed, and there is a selvedge at the bottom. Shallow cusping at intervals with a range of approx. 10-12 cm is present at the top. Judging by the crack pattern parallel to the edges, the bars of the original strainer were 6 cm wide. On the left and right the picture plane is folded over the current stretcher, reducing the original width of the composition by approx. 2 cm.
Preparatory layers The single, coarse, beige ground extends over the original bottom tacking edge, and up to the trimmed edges of the canvas at the top and on the left and right. It consists of medium-sized white pigment particles, orangey earth-coloured pigment, occasional large black and a few dark red pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye, infrared photography or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the original tacking on all sides. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, carefully reserving the figure, hair and earrings. An undermodelling with a very sparse use of transparent brown and red earth is still visible in places, for instance in the shadows of the flesh. A luminous earth red forms a glowing mid-tone adjacent to the darkest undermodelling, as seen in the shading along the index finger of the sitter’s left hand. A cool, light optical grey was created where the carefully blended, light flesh tones cover the dark undermodelling. A cool scumble along the jaw of the shaded side of the face catches a secondary reflection of light from the lace collar. Finely painted, umber contours delineate the separation between the eyelids and the eyeballs, and between the lit background and the lace on Elisabeth Kessels’s left shoulder. Compositional changes consist primarily of adjustments to contours, most importantly the reduction of the outlines of the body on both sides. On the right, the form of an earlier, wider reserve can still be made out with the naked eye and infrared reflectography. The latter also revealed that the little finger of the sitter’s left hand was not reserved and that the positions of both the thumb of the other hand and the black cloth it holds were altered slightly. The black paint used for final details on the black sleeves exhibits traction cracks.
Gwen Tauber, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

infrared reflectography: G. Tauber, RMA, 26 September 2009
infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 11 June 2010
infrared reflectography: G. Tauber, RMA, 11 June 2010
paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-A-1340/1-2, 11 June 2010
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 11 June 2010

Condition

Fair. A piece of the original softwood strainer is attached to the top bar of the current stretcher. Numerous pinhole losses can be seen in the flesh tones. There is discrete, yet discoloured retouching throughout.

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, 1893: canvas lined
H. Plagge, 1963: treated
M. van de Laar, 1990: retouched and revarnished

Provenance

For both the present painting (SK-A-1340) and its pendant (SK-A-1339)
…; sale, Jan Hendrick Cremer (1813-1885, Arnhem and Ixelles), Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 26 October 1886, no. 23, fl. 345, to the museum¹

Object number: SK-A-1340

The artist

Caesar van Everdingen (Alkmaar 1616/17 - Alkmaar 1678)

Caesar van Everdingen’s year of birth has been deduced from statements of his age in two documents. He was the eldest son born of the second marriage of the Alkmaar notary and attorney Pieter van Everdingen to the town midwife Aechje Claesdr Moer. Since Van Everdingen was already recorded as a painter’s apprentice in Alkmaar in 1628, when he was around 12, he was probably training with a local artist, possibly Claes Jacobsz van der Heck. In 1632, barely 16 years old, he became a member of the Guild of St Luke, which Van der Heck had helped to establish. His earliest dated pictures are two companion portraits of his father and mother from 1636.² According to Houbraken, he was also taught by the Utrecht artist Jan van Bronckhorst, and the latter’s influence is indeed noticeable in some of Van Everdingen’s earliest paintings. He might have rounded off his studies with him in Utrecht around 1639, as well as with Jan van Bijlert.

In 1641 Van Everdingen was awarded the prestigious commission for a group portrait of the officers of Alkmaar’s Old Civic Guard.³ From 1641 to 1644 he was involved in a major project that probably came his way through the architect and artist Jacob van Campen. It was to paint the shutters of the new organ for the Grote Kerk in Alkmaar, for which he received 2,150 guilders. He carried out preparatory work for it on a scale model of the instrument in 1642-43 under the supervision of Van Campen, at whose country house near Amersfoort, Huis Beekhoven in Randenbroek, he lived for a year and a half. Van Everdingen may have gone on a trip to France in the months leading up to his wedding to Helena van Oosthoorn at the end of 1646. Shortly afterwards he was invited to contribute five paintings for the decoration of the Oranjezaal (Orange Hall) in Amalia van Solms’s newly built residence Huis ten Bosch in The Hague, for which he was paid 2,700 guilders. It was probably in connection with that commission that he moved to Haarlem at the end of 1647 or early 1648, becoming a member of its Old Civic Guard in the latter year. He probably lodged with his younger brother, the landscapist Allaert van Everdingen. It was only in 1651 that he registered with the city’s Guild of St Luke, which he later served in various official functions. After his relocation to Haarlem he was asked to produce two group portraits of the Alkmaar Young and Old Civic Guards, both of which he finished in 1657.⁴ There are various documents that show that Van Everdingen was living in Amsterdam in 1661, but the following year he and his wife were back in Alkmaar, when he was paid for a picture for the renovated Prinsenzaal (Princes’ Hall) in its Town Hall.⁵ His last dated works are two pendant portraits of Willem Baert and Elisabeth Kessels of 1671.⁶ However, there is documentary evidence that Van Everdingen painted a likeness of Wollebrand Geleynsz de Jongh in 1674.⁷ The artist died in 1678 and was buried in the Grote Kerk in Alkmaar on 13 October.

Van Everdingen was comfortably off all his life, and regularly lent money to various people in the 1650s and later. Oddly enough, no writers praised him while he was alive. Houbraken lists his pupils as his brother-in-law Laurens van Oosthoorn (?-1680), Hendrik Graauw (c. 1627-1693), Arien Warmenhuyzen (dates unknown) and Adriaan Dekker (dates unknown). Thomas Heeremans (1641-1695) is also occasionally mentioned as his apprentice. With the exception of a single drawn preliminary study, all of Van Everdingen’s works are either paintings or painted interior pieces, mainly histories and portraits. Exceptions to these genres are two still lifes and the decoration of a model ship. His painted oeuvre runs to 67 pictures, all of them meticulously and smoothly executed, with his hallmark of a chiaroscuro with gentle transitions from light to dark. He convincingly imitated the texture of the materials of his draperies and clothing. Van Everdingen is regarded as a classicist, and although he did idealize the bodies of his figures, their faces are often very portrait-like.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 94; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 107-08; C.W. Bruinvis, ‘De Van Everdingens’, Oud Holland 17 (1899), pp. 216-22; Plietzsch in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XI, Leipzig 1915, p. 107; N.J.M. Dresch, ‘Caesar van Everdingen’s nalatenschap’, Oud Holland 52 (1935), pp. 41-48; P. Huys Janssen, Caesar van Everdingen 1616/17-1678: Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné, Doornspijk 2002, pp. 25-56, 153-92 (documents); Huys Janssen in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXXV, Munich/Leipzig 2003, p. 406; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 151-53; C. Klinkert and Y. Bleyerveld (eds.), Painting Beauty: Caesar van Everdingen (1616/1617-1678), exh. cat. Alkmaar (Stedelijk Museum)/Helsinki (Finnish National Gallery) 2016-17

Entry

The identities of this woman and the man in the pendant portrait (SK-A-1339; also fig. a), shown standing at almost knee-length, were unknown when the museum acquired the paintings in 1886. It was Moes who discovered who the couple were and listed Elisabeth Kessels and Willem Baert around 1903 in his personal, annotated copy of Iconographia Batava, which is now in the Rijksmuseum.⁸ The 1904 collection catalogue was the first publication to announce the sitter’s names to the world. Their families were prominent in Alkmaar. Willem Baert was the son of Jacob Cornelisz Baert, who had been depicted by Caesar van Everdingen back in 1657 as captain of the Orange company of the Old Civic Guard in the group portrait of its officers and standard-bearers.⁹ On 21 July 1658 Willem married his cousin Elisabeth Kessels, daughter of Pieter Willemsz Kessels. The latter’s sister Catharina was the wife of Jacob Baert and Willem’s mother. Both Jacob Baert and Pieter Kessels combined a variety of official functions in the town, such as councillor, alderman and burgomaster, with membership of the region’s polder board.

Willem Baert followed a similar career path in Alkmaar, being, among others, an alderman (1665-71), councillor (1671-84) and burgomaster (1676-84).¹⁰ He and Elisabeth had 11 children, most of whom died young. The family lived on Langestraat in Alkmaar, one of the main streets, where the Town Hall also stood, and had a country estate north-east of the city on the site now occupied by the village of Burgerbrug. It is very possible that their formal portraits were commissioned to mark Willem Baert’s election as councillor in April 1671.¹¹ All but one of the identified sitters in Van Everdingen’s pictures are citizens of Alkmaar. They probably knew each other well as part of the close-knit network of the local elite. Willem Baert, for example, was the executor of the will of Wollebrand Geleynsz de Jongh, who asked Van Everdingen to paint his likeness in 1674.¹²

Van Everdingen’s 26 extant portraits are distinguished by their high quality of execution and their great variety. In addition to civic guard pieces there are pastoral scenes and a portrait historié. Pendant likenesses as those of Elisabeth Kessels and Willem Baert are of a traditional type that was widespread throughout the Netherlands. The earliest other examples in the artist’s oeuvre are the ones of his parents from 1636.¹³ Two more such companion pieces of a married couple depict Cornelis Jacobsz Groot and a yet unidentified woman, dated 1656 and 1664 respectively,¹⁴ and there is also an anonymous pair that can be ascribed to around 1660.¹⁵ The busts of Maria van Steenhuijsen of 1646 and Johan van Nordingen de Jonge of 1648 make a slightly less formal impression due to the greater liveliness of their hand gestures.¹⁶

In keeping with the stately nature of their portraits, both sitters are wearing costly attire. Elisabeth Kessels is wearing a black bodice with short, puffed sleeves, which is decorated with wide bands of lace. She has a white collar with fashionable floral motifs. Her hair is in the Sévigné style, with ringlets on either side of the head, and is adorned with the same ribbons as on her bodice and sleeves. Her toilet is completed with pendant earrings, a brooch and two rings, all set with diamonds. The fan she is holding is a status symbol comparable to the glove in the hand of her husband. Apart from his flat starched collar and short cuffs, Willem Baert is clad in plain black, with a cloak draped around his waist and left arm.

The style of the two paintings is in line with Haarlem portraiture of the 1640s and ’50s, which was dominated by Frans Hals and Johannes Verspronck. The element that Van Everdingen added to his likenesses was a sense of grandeur. During his work on the organ shutters for Alkmaar’s Grote Kerk in 1641-44,¹⁷ he experimented at length with a low vantage point, and he evidently found the resulting monumental effect widely applicable. The stately look of both portraits is strengthened by the plain backgrounds.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

For both the present painting (SK-A-1340) and its pendant (SK-A-1339)
P. Huys Janssen, Caesar van Everdingen 1616/17-1678: Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné, Doornspijk 2002, pp. 15, 52, 76, 80-81, 108, 125, nos. 22-23, with earlier literature; Huys Janssen in C. Klinkert and Y. Bleyerveld (eds.), Painting Beauty: Caesar van Everdingen (1616/1617-1678), exh. cat. Alkmaar (Stedelijk Museum)/Helsinki (Finnish National Gallery) 2016-17, pp. 191-94, nos. 33a-b

Collection catalogues

1886, p. 44, no. 353 (as Portrait of a Woman); 1903, p. 97, no. 912 (as Portrait of a Woman); 1934, p. 97, no. 912; 1960, p. 98, no. 912; 1976, p. 222, no. A 1340

Citation

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024, 'Caesar Boëtius van Everdingen, Portrait of Elisabeth Pietersdr Kessels (1640-1717), 1671', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8399

(accessed 10 November 2024 00:28:17).

Figures

Fig. a Caesar van Everdingen, *Portrait of Willem Jacobsz Baert* (SK-A-1339) and *Portrait of Elisabeth Pietersdr Kessels* (SK-A-1340)