Object data
oil on panel
support: height 85.1 cm × width 65.7 cm × thickness 1.3 cm
outer size: depth 5.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-6065)
Johannes Verspronck
Portrait of a Man, probably a Member of the Wallis Family
1653
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower right (‘ver’ ligated): Johan C verSpronck. aº 1653
Technical notes
Support The panel consists of three vertically grained oak planks (16.6, 30.5 and 18.6 cm), approx. 0.5 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1638. The panel could have been ready for use by 1649, but a date in or after 1655 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the edges of the support, running over them in a few places. The first, solid, translucent off-white layer primarily fills the grain of the wood and is followed by a thin, off-white layer consisting of white pigment with an addition of black and fine earth pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography and infrared photography revealed loose, cursory lines of underdrawing in a dry medium, indicating the contour of the face and the positions of the hair, eyes, nose and mouth. The hand was delineated in a wet medium, possibly a thin dark paint.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support, running over them in a few places. The background was applied in two layers. The sitter was left in reserve in the initial, light brown layer. The man was first indicated with a slightly translucent brown. This undermodelling was left exposed in several areas, for example around the contour, and shows through in the thin shadow areas of the nose and right eye. Lines were scratched in the wet paint to mark some of the underlying forms and occasionally redefine their contours. Most of those incisions were covered at a later stage. The second layer of the background, consisting of a thin, translucent dark brown glaze, was applied around the contours of the sitter. Intensely dark brushstrokes in the clothing and hat increase the suggestion of depth. The thumbnail was given more detail and definition with three short scratches in the wet paint. Infrared reflectography showed that the collar initially extended somewhat further down and that the contour of the sitter’s left shoulder was painted further to the right, which is also clearly visible to the naked eye.
Michel van de Laar, 2024
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 16 May 2008
- X-radiography: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 1836 (1-6), 14 July 2008
- infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 2 December 2008
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 15 May 2009
- paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-4997/1-2, 29 July 2009
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 29 July 2009
Literature scientific examination and reports
A. Krekeler et al., ‘Consistent Choices: A Technical Study of Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck’s Portraits in the Rijksmuseum’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 62 (2014), pp. 2-23
Condition
Good. Due to the shrinking and expansion of the planks numerous miniscule paint losses have occurred along the grain of the wood.
Conservation
- M. van de Laar, 2009: complete restoration
Original framing
A dark brown fruitwood scotia frame1
Provenance
…; by descent to Jonkvrouw Anna Hubertina van Reenen, née Van Reenen (1892-1974), Nijmegen and Laren; her daughter, Jonkvrouw Dorothea Storm de Grave, née Van Reenen (1916-2006), Huis ter Heide, 1974; purchased from her estate by the museum, with SK-A-4998, SK-A-4999 and SK-A-5000, 3 March 2008
Object number: SK-A-4997
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the BankGiro Lottery
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Johannes Verspronck (Haarlem 1600/03 - Haarlem 1662)
Johannes Verspronck, who is sometimes wrongly called Gerard Sprong in older sources on the basis of passages in Schrevelius and Houbraken, was born on an unknown date. Early authors favoured 1597 or 1606-09, but it has since been established that the place and year of his birth must have been Haarlem between 1600 and 1603. He came from a fairly prosperous family who probably subscribed to the Catholic faith. His most likely teacher was his father, Cornelis Engelsz of Gouda, a painter of portraits and kitchen still lifes. It is also assumed on stylistic grounds that the young Verspronck was apprenticed to Frans Hals. He registered with the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1632, as did his younger brother Jochem, none of whose works has survived. Verspronck never held guild office, although he was once, in 1644, a candidate for the post of warden. He never married, and continued living in his parents’ house with an unwed sister and brother. The three of them later bought a neighbouring property. It is clear from the fact that he loaned several sums of money to family members that he was not poor. He was buried in Haarlem’s Grote Kerk on 30 June 1662.
Verspronck was one of the leading portraitists of seventeenth-century Haarlem. His known oeuvre consists of more than 100 paintings, all but one or two in that genre. They include two group portraits: The Regentesses of the Grote or St Elizabeth Hospital in Haarlem of 1641 and The Regentesses of the Holy Spirit Almshouse in Haarlem of 1642.2 Houbraken’s statement that Verspronck also produced civic guard pieces is probably due to confusion with the father’s work. His earliest dated pictures are from 1634 and the last one, a likeness of the parish priest Augustinus Alstenius Bloemert, from 1658.3
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024
References
T. Schrevelius, Harlemias, Haarlem 1648, p. 382; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 123; 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, p. 224; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, II, Leipzig/Vienna 1910, p. 783; Lilienfeld in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXIV, Leipzig 1940, p. 302; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, pp. 13-20; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, pp. 421, 1034, 1036, 1041; 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. 323-24; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Portretten door Johannes Verspronck in meervoud’, De Nederlandsche Leeuw 125 (2008), cols. 153-55; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 9-11
Entry
It is impossible to make out for certain who the man is in this portrait of 1653, but since the work belongs with a group of paintings that Johannes Verspronck made of the same family, he is very probably a close relative of either Eduard Wallis or Maria van Strijp, who both sat for the artist a year earlier.4 He appears to be of the same generation as them, and since Maria van Strijp had only sisters it is reasonable to assume that it is one of her husband’s brothers.5 The cleft in the present sitter’s chin is also to be seen in the likeness of Eduard Wallis and could be a genetic trait. Eduard had three older brothers, Dirck (1612-?), Johannes (1617-1665) and Jacobus (1619-1675). Like him, the latter two married women from the Van Strijp family.6 However, the lack of any documented portraits of these brothers or other clues makes any identification guesswork.7
The sitter is shown half-length, and although only one hand is visible he is probably holding his hat with both of them.8 Like the 1652 portraits of Eduard Wallis and Maria van Strijp, this one is on panel, though a little smaller, and has remained in its original fruitwood frame.9 It is not known when this painting came into the possession of the descendants of the Wallis-Van Strijp family, but it could very well be one of the unspecified portraits listed in Maria van Strijp’s probate inventory of 1707.10
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, pp. 54, 119, no. 93; T. Dibbits, ‘Portretten van Adriana Croes, Eduard Wallis, Maria van Strijp en Dirck, Jacobus of Johannes Wallis’, Bulletin van de Vereniging Rembrandt 18 (2008), no. 2, pp. 22-25; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 50-51
Citation
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of a Man, probably a Member of the Wallis Family, 1653', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.455605
(accessed 25 November 2024 14:40:12).