Portrait of a Collector, possibly Constantijn Sennepart (1625-1703)

Entry

The last two digits of the date of this portrait are no longer clearly visible. In the past the year has been read as both ‘1662’ and ‘1665’.⁴ The latter accords better with the large rectangular white band worn by the sitter and the ribbons on the sleeve of his outer garment.⁵ Unusually for a work of such a diminutive size, the support is a rather roughly woven canvas. The paint, though, was applied very smoothly, without visible brushstrokes or impasto,⁶ as if Adriaen van Ostade wanted to demonstrate that he could achieve the same meticulous effect on canvas as he did in the pictures he executed on panel and copper in this period.⁷

Catalogued by the Rijksmuseum in 1976 as a portrait of a scholar, Van Ostade’s picture can be more aptly described as a likeness of a collector, for with his left hand he is holding open a page in a so-called kunstboek showing a drawing or print that has been bound or pasted into it. The other volumes on the table and in the bookcase behind the sitter are probably also ‘art books’. Seventeenth-century painted portraits of Dutch collectors depicted as such are very rare. In fact, only a few other examples can be given: one by Gerrit Dou of his patron Pieter Spiering with his wife and daughter, known only from a description in Joachim von Sandrart’s Teutsche Academie,⁸ three by Caspar Netscher, including his 1672 Portrait of Abraham van Lennep,⁹ and one by Richard Brakenburgh, dated 1688.¹⁰ The composition of both the present likeness by Van Ostade and Netscher’s of Abraham van Lennep, in which the sitter is shown seated with an open book at a table in front of a bookcase, belongs to the pictorial tradition of the scholar’s portrait that can be traced back in the northern Netherlands to late-sixteenth-century works by the brothers Pieter and Aert Pietersz.¹¹ A series of five engraved effigies of Amsterdam scholars published by Cornelis Danckerts around 1641 led to an increased popularity of the type in the second half of the century.¹² As far as we know, Van Ostade is the only Haarlem artist to have employed this formula. He used a similar design for his single-figure genre scenes of doctors and lawyers seated at tables. His earliest dated picture of this kind is from 1664,¹³ which indicates that the composition of the Rijksmuseum Portrait of a Collector probably developed out of these genre paintings.

The identity of one of the early collectors of Van Ostade’s works on paper is known from Houbraken’s account of the artist’s life. According to him, Van Ostade made a number of his famous watercolour drawings in the house of Constantijn Sennepart (1625-1703) in Amsterdam, after the latter had convinced him in 1662 (1672 is meant) to abandon the trip to Lübeck he was planning in order to evade the advancing French army.¹⁴ While Houbraken’s account of the aborted journey is probably a tall tale, the catalogue of the posthumous sale of Sennepart’s art cabinet in 1704 confirms that he owned various works by Van Ostade.¹⁵ The first item recorded is an ‘art book’ containing ‘36 drawings by Van Ostade, uncommonly bold of colour, consisting of peasant companies, taverns and many other scenes; his very best manner’. All told, the catalogue lists 11 of such volumes containing drawings, 25 with prints, including examples by Van Ostade himself and others executed after his designs by Cornelis Visscher, as well as 15 ‘bound works’, such as ‘Van der Heyden’s description of the hose fire appliance, with figures’. One of the entries gives an idea of what these kunstboeken looked like: ‘Art books bound in many sizes, in English, French, vellum and Russian leather bindings’. Also up for sale were ‘2 large oak cabinets with shelves and drawers for storing art books etc.’.

Constantijn Sennepart, who was a silk merchant by profession, also dealt in art. The collector Sybrand Feitama Sr, for example, acquired a number of watercolour drawings by Van Ostade from him in 1695.¹⁶ Sennepart must also have owned a sizable library and quantity of paintings. They were inherited by his daughter Geertruit in 1706 along with his house, called ‘Vergulde Son’ (Gilded Sun), on Prinsengracht, and other property.¹⁷ The library was valued at 1,090 and the pictures at 3,485 guilders in a document of 1721.¹⁸

The 1704 auction catalogue also lists a number of miniatures. Not included was one now in the Bibliothèque Wallonne in Leiden which has an inscription on the reverse signed by Geertruit Sennepart and stating that it is a likeness of her late father (fig. a). The sitter in Van Ostade’s portrait resembles the depicted man enough to warrant a tentative identification as Constantijn Sennepart.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements