Portrait of Willem II (1626-50), Prince of Orange

1651

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 110.5 cm × width 86 cm
frame: height 142 cm × width 108 cm
sight size: height 104.4 cm × width 83.5 cm

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower right (G and H ligated): GHonthorst ƒc 1651

Technical notes

The plain-weave canvas support has been lined. The right side and bottom of the composition continue approximately 3 and 2 cm respectively over the edges of the stretcher. While the cusping is broad at the top and on the left side, it is shallow at the bottom and on the right side. An imprint was made by the original stretcher on the left and at the top, about 3 cm from the edge. There is no imprint on the right, however, and the stretcher imprint at the bottom is very close to the edge. This evidence indicates that the painting was transferred to a smaller stretcher. The ground layer, visible, for example, in the abraded areas of the sash, has an off-white colour. The paint layers were applied opaquely and wet in wet, with a minimal amount of visible brushmarking.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 22 November 2004

Condition

Fair. The figure’s hair and the sash are abraded. The varnish is unevenly discoloured.

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, 1896: canvas lined; varnish regenerated

Provenance

? Commissioned by the Admiralty of the Maas, Rotterdam; first mentioned in the Charter Room of this institution, 7 April 1800;¹ transferred to the museum, May 1800; on loan to the Oranje-Nassau Museum, The Hague, 1926-32; on loan to Paleis Het Loo, Apeldoorn, since 1978

Object number: SK-A-177

The artist

Gerard van Honthorst (Utrecht 1592 - Utrecht 1656)

Gerard van Honthorst was born in Utrecht on 4 November 1592 into a family of artists. His father, Herman Gerritsz van Honthorst, was a decorative painter and probably his first teacher. According to Von Sandrart and Houbraken, Honthorst trained with Abraham Bloemaert. When exactly he went to Italy is not known; a drawn copy after Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St Peter in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo is dated 1616,² indicating that he was in Rome by that year. His first documented painting, The Beheading of St John the Baptist, was executed for the Church of Santa Maria della Scala in 1617-18.³ Such Caravaggesque night scenes, which often include artificial sources of illumination, garnered Honthorst the nickname ‘Gherardo delle Notti’ in Italy. Among his Roman patrons were the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, in whose house Honthorst lived, and Cardinal Scipione Borghese.

A few months after his return to Utrecht in 1620, Honthorst married Sophia Coopmans. He joined the Guild of St Luke there and set up his own workshop. Von Sandrart, one of his apprentices in the 1620s, informs us that Honthorst had as many as 25 pupils at a time, from each of whom he received the sizable tuition fee of 100 guilders a year. With the exception of 1627, Honthorst served as dean of the guild between 1625 and 1630. It was also in the mid-1620s that he received his first commission from the court of Frederik Hendrik in The Hague.⁴ A commission from the British ambassador in The Hague, Sir Dudley Carleton, for Lord Arundel came as early as 1620⁵ and eventually led to the invitation from Charles I to work on Banqueting House in Whitehall in 1628.⁶ Honthorst returned to the United Provinces the same year, but continued to work for the English court in the years to come. In 1630 he became court painter to the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia, Frederick V and Elizabeth, in The Hague. Honthorst also painted numerous portraits of the Stadholder and his wife, Amalia van Solms, and took part in the decoration of, among others, the palaces Honselaarsdijk, Huis ter Nieuburch (1636-39) and Huis ten Bosch (1649-50). In order to accommodate his work in The Hague, he set up a second workshop there in 1637 and joined the guild, serving as dean in 1640. Also in 1637, he became the principal artist to decorate the Banqueting Hall in Kronborg Castle for King Christian IV of Denmark. Honthorst was, perhaps, the most internationally successful Dutch artist of his time. Despite, or possibly as a result of this success, his late style was criticized as ‘stiff ’ and ‘slick’ (‘stijve gladdicheyt’) and he was esteemed a ‘much less great master than themselves’ (‘beaucoup moins grand maistre qu’eux’) by his fellow artists working on the Oranjezaal.⁷ He died on 27 April 1656 and was buried in the Catharijnekerk in Utrecht.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Mancini c. 1620, fol. 86 (Judson/Ekkart 1999, p. 47); Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 22, 102, 172-74; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 149-50; Braun 1966, pp. 7-59, 340-88 (documents); Bok in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1986, pp. 276-79; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 382-83; Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. XXXIII-XXXIV, 1-24

Entry

This is one of several replicas of Gerard van Honthorst’s 1647 Portrait of Willem II and his Wife Mary Stuart (SK-A-871) in which the figure of the stadholder has been isolated and shown at three-quarter length.⁸ As discussed under Technical notes, the painting has been transferred to a smaller stretcher, and approximately 2 and 3 centimetres of the composition at the bottom and on the right side respectively have been folded over the edges of the stretcher. Part of the second digit of the date and the entire third and fourth digits are on the strip of canvas folded over the right edge. The transfer to a smaller stretcher probably occurred before 1858, as the dimensions given in the Rijksmuseum catalogue of that year correspond to the painting’s present dimensions, and only the first two digits of the date are recorded.⁹

Beginning with the 1880 Rijksmuseum catalogue,¹⁰ the date of the Portrait of Willem II has been read as 1661 and has recently led to the hypothesis that Willem van Honthorst was responsible for the painting’s execution as head of his brother Gerard’s studio after the latter’s death in 1656.¹¹ However, although somewhat damaged, the third digit is more likely a ‘5’ than a ‘6’, and the date should probably be read as 1651. Stylistically, there is nothing about the painting to suggest the hand of Willem van Honthorst. While its stiff, rudimentary execution leads to the conclusion that the painting is a workshop replica, the new reading of the date indicates that it was produced during Gerard van Honthorst’s lifetime.

A portrait of Willem II was transferred from the Admiralty of the Maas to the Nationale Konst-Gallery in The Hague in May 1800, together with portraits of William the Silent, Maurits and Frederik Hendrik.¹² The portraits of William the Silent (SK-A-253) and Frederik Hendrik (SK-A-254) have been identified as the works by Van Mierevelt’s studio that are still in the Rijksmuseum today. The third portrait, of Prince Maurits, is probably the one now in Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, which was painted by Van Mierevelt (SK-A-255). For reasons set out in the entry on the Portrait of Frederik Hendrik (SK-A-254), these three portraits were probably executed around 1632. Moes and Van Biema considered Honthorst’s 1644 Portrait of an Officer (SK-A-176), which in the past has been incorrectly identified as showing Willem II, a potential candidate for the fourth portrait that came from the Admiralty of the Maas. That painting, however, was most likely part of another, very different, series.¹³ In addition, it has a panel support, instead of the canvas support of the three Van Mierevelt workshop portraits in the Admiralty of the Maas series, and is significantly smaller. The present picture, which unequivocally portrays Willem II and has apparently been part of the museum’s collection since at least 1801,¹⁴ does have a canvas support, and its dimensions are very close to those of the three Van Mierevelt workshop portraits. There is a distinct possibility, therefore, that the Admiralty of the Maas commissioned this Portrait of Willem II from Gerard van Honthorst’s studio in, or somewhat before 1651 to accompany the three stadholder portraits by Van Mierevelt’s workshop already hanging in its Charter Room.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 148.

Literature

Braun 1966, p. 267 (as Willem van Honthorst, 1661); Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 44, 238, no. 301, version no. 9 (as Willem van Honthorst, 1661)

Collection catalogues

1801, p. 47, no. 5 (as Gerard van Honthorst); 1809, p. 36, no. 147 (as Gerard van Honthorst); 1843, p. 31, no. 144 (as Gerard van Honthorst; ‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 14, no. 131 (as Gerard van Honthorst; fl. 400); 1858, p. 69, no. 146 (as Gerard van Honthorst); 1880, p. 154, no. 157 (as Willem van Honthorst, 1661); 1887, p. 80, no. 679 (as Willem van Honthorst, 1661); 1903, p. 134, no. 1245 (as Willem van Honthorst, 1661); 1934, p. 135, no. 1245 (as Willem van Honthorst, 1661); 1960, p. 144, no. 1245 (as Willem van Honthorst, 1661); 1976, p. 287, no. A 177 (as Willem van Honthorst, 1661); 1992, p. 58, no. A 177 (as Willem van Honthorst); 2007, no. 148

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'workshop of Gerard van Honthorst, Portrait of Willem II (1626-50), Prince of Orange, 1651', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6696

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