Portrait of a Boy with a Kolf Club

1631

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 115.4 cm × width 85.3 cm
outer size: depth 8.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

date, top left: Anno. 1631.

Technical notes

The oak support consists of three planks with a vertical grain and is bevelled on all sides. The thin, smooth ground layer is probably buff-coloured. The paint was applied with visible brushstrokes, while sharp contour lines were avoided in the face, where visible brushstrokes give a sfumato effect.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 11 August 2003

Condition

Fair. The painting is slightly abraded and is damaged along the joins. There is some blanching of the varnish, which has yellowed, discoloured areas of retouching, particularly in the left background. There are several scratches on the lower part of the kolf club.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1918: revarnished
W. Hesterman, 1972: panel joins glued; retouched and revarnished

Provenance

...; sale, Château de Heeswijk, Musée ‘Baron van den Bogaerde’, ’s-Hertogenbosch (A.A.A.M. van der Does et al.), 19 June 1900 sqq., no. 89, as Dirck Dircksz Santvoort, fl. 830, to the museum¹

Object number: SK-A-1908

The artist

Wybrand de Geest (Leeuwarden c. 1592 - Leeuwarden 1661/65)

Wybrand de Geest was probably born in Leeuwarden on 16 August 1592, going by the inscription on the back of his self-portrait (SK-A-1780) in the Rijksmuseum. It is likely that he received his initial training from his father, Simon Juckes de Geest, a glasspainter. It emerges from the contributions to his album amicorum that he trained with Abraham Bloemaert in Utrecht in 1613-14, and the same source shows that he travelled for seven years after completing his apprenticeship, and visited Paris and Aix-en-Provence. He spent most of his time in Rome, however, where he stayed from 1616. In the Schildersbent (Band of Painters) there he was given the nickname ‘The Frisian Eagle’, according to Houbraken because of his ‘high flight in art’. He was still in Rome in 1620, but was back in Leeuwarden in 1621, for in that year he painted the group portrait of the local Verspeeck family.² He was to spend the rest of his life in Leeuwarden. A Catholic, he married before the magistrate on 19 October 1622, his bride being Hendrickje Uylenburgh. One of Hendrickje’s cousins was the father of Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife. De Geest moved in lofty circles, was himself not without means, served as a regent of a charitable institution in 1639, and bore a coat of arms. His children and grandchildren even felt that they belonged to the Frisian aristocracy. His praises were sung by the poet Joost van den Vondel while he was still alive, and several eulogies were written about portraits of his. It is not known when he died, but it was between 1661 and 1665. His last works date from 1660, and there is also a letter he wrote in 1661. In 1665 his wife was recorded as being a widow.

Although Houbraken called him a ‘fine history and portrait painter’, almost all his surviving works are portraits. After his return from Rome he became the favourite portrait painter of Ernst Casimir of Nassau-Dietz (later Stadholder of Friesland) and his wife Sophia Hedwig of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, of their son Hendrik Casimir, and of the landed aristocracy of Friesland. Fragments from the diaries of Hendrik’s brother, Willem Frederik, record that he visited De Geest on more than one occasion ‘to have myself painted’. De Geest must have had a studio with assistants, given the many commissions he received, of which copies were often made. His pupils included Jacob Potma (c. 1610-80) and his son Julius Franciscus de Geest (?-1699). In the course of 40 years his portraiture evolved from the solemn, formal manner of Van Mierevelt and Van Ravesteyn to a more modern, fashionable style.

Yvette Bruijnen, 2007

References
Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 147-48; Campo Weyerman I, 1729, pp. 377-78; Descamps I, 1753, pp. 402-03; Hofstede de Groot 1889a; Hofstede de Groot in Thieme/Becker XIII, 1920, pp. 331-33; Wassenbergh 1967, pp. 37-40; De Vries 1982, pp. 9-11; Visser/Van der Plaat 1995, pp. 375, 479; De Vries in Turner 1996, XII, p. 233

Entry

This full-length portrait shows a boy in a doublet and skirt with a striking zigzag pattern. He is holding a kolf club in his right hand and is showing the viewer a ball with his left hand. It is clear from these sporting attributes, which give the otherwise sober painting a sense of playfulness, that this is a boy.³ The fact that he is wearing a skirt means that he is not yet seven years old.⁴

The painting was sold in 1900 as a work by Dirck Dircksz van Santvoort, but was attributed to De Geest in the museum catalogue of 1903. The sober and rather static depiction of the sitter, and the style, in which visible brushstrokes play an important part, make the attribution plausible.

The painting had a pendant in the form of another full-length portrait of a child with a kolf club who must be a brother of the one in the Rijksmuseum.⁵ The two are companion pieces in every respect. Both children are wearing the same kind of clothes with a similar zigzag pattern, and both are holding a kolf club and ball. They are also standing on a black-and-white tiled floor against a neutral background, with the light falling from the left. The Rijksmuseum portrait shows the boy turned to the left, while the other one is turned to the right. In addition, both portraits are on panel, have virtually the same dimensions, and are dated 1631. Another indication that they originally hung side by side is a copy, probably from the 19th century, depicting both children, now in a landscape setting.⁶ That copy must have been made when the two portraits were still together. The two originals were also copied in a small format.⁷ Other pendants are known depicting two brothers wearing the same clothes and with the same attributes.⁸

This portrait is in the tradition of realistic children’s portraits of the period, in which the attribute of the kolf club frequently features.⁹ The Rijksmuseum painting is a representative example of early children’s portraiture by De Geest, who in the mid-1640s added the pastoral child’s portrait to his repertoire.¹⁰

Although it has been assumed until now that the oak box frame originally belonged with this painting,¹¹ and undoubtedly dates from the period when the painting was made there is oblique tapering at bottom left on the back of the support. This, together with some unaligned holes and notches left by nails, makes it doubtful that this is the original frame.¹²

Yvette Bruijnen, 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. 80.

Literature

Wassenbergh 1967, p. 35, no. 23 (also mentioned erroneously as no. 53 on p. 36, and as dated 1637); De Bruyn Kops 1984, p. 53; De Bruyn Kops in Amsterdam 1984b, p. 81; De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 72; De Bruyn Kops in Van Thiel/De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 127

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 104, no. 964 (as attributed to De Geest, Portrait of a Girl); 1934, p. 105, no. 964; 1960, p. 109, no. 964; 1976, p. 238, no. A 1908; 2007, no. 80

Citation

Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'Wybrand de (I) Geest, Portrait of a Boy with a Kolf Club, 1631', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8556

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