Object data
oil on panel
support: height 98 cm × width 76 cm
Johannes Verspronck
Portrait of Eduard Wallis (1621-1684)
1652
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower left, on the back of the chair (‘ver’ ligated): Joh C. verSpronck f an° 1652
Technical notes
Support The panel consists of three vertically grained oak planks (approx. 25.7, 25 and 25.1 cm), approx. 0.8 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled at the top and bottom, and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1634. The panel could have been ready for use by 1645, but a date in or after 1651 is more likely. The middle plank is from the same tree as that of the pendant (SK-A-5000).
Preparatory layers The apparently thin double ground extends up to the edges of the support, running over them in a few places. What seems to be the first layer primarily fills the grain of the wood and is followed by a whitish-pink layer consisting mostly of fine and coarse white pigment particles with an addition of black and fine earth pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography and infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in a dry medium, consisting of thin, sketchy lines roughly indicating the contours of the face and the positions of the eyes, nose and mouth. The body and hands were delineated in a wet medium, probably a thin black paint.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support, running over them in a few places. The background was built up in two layers. The sitter was left in reserve in the initial, light greyish-brown layer. He was first indicated with a translucent brown undermodelling. The face was worked up with a wide variety of flesh tones, applied wet in wet, leaving the underlying layer visible in the shaded areas. Touches of an opaque, dark brown paint were added to the right of the nose to create a hard shadow. The initial lay-in of the clothes and hat was done in black. Lines were scratched just above his right cuff while the paint was still wet, probably to mark its position before applying a layer of dark grey paint, which was worked wet in wet with the black of the clothing and hat, to add volume. The second layer of the background, consisting of a thin, translucent greenish-brown glaze, was applied when the portrait was almost completed, and adjustments were made to the man’s contours, in some places continuing over the finished background. Final intense dark brushstrokes increase the suggestion of depth in the clothing and hat. X-radiography revealed that the hat was first painted smaller, the collar slightly larger and that two previous attempts were made to position the highlight in the sitter’s right eye. The paint surface is smooth, with some slight impasto on the tassels and in other highlights.
Zeph Benders, 2024
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 16 May 2008
- paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-4999/1-11, 8 July 2008
- X-radiography: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 1834 (1-6), 14 July 2008
- infrared reflectography: A. Wallert, RMA, 7 November 2008
- technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 29 June 2009
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 7 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.
Conservation
- Z. Benders, 2008 - 2009: complete restoration
Original framing
A dark brown fruitwood scotia frame1
Provenance
For both the present painting (SK-A-4999) and its pendant (SK-A-5000)
? Commissioned by or for the sitters; probate inventory, Maria van Strijp (1627-1707), widow of Eduard Wallis, Haarlem, 17 April 1707 (‘Twee portretten van Eduard Wallis en Maria van Strijp’);2 by descent to Jonkvrouw Anna Hubertina van Reenen, née Van Reenen (1892-1974), Nijmegen and Laren; from whom on loan to the museum, as portraits of an unknown couple, 1952-2008 (inv. nos. SK-C-1414, SK-C-1415); her daughter, Jonkvrouw Dorothea Storm de Grave, née Van Reenen (1916-2006), Huis ter Heide, 1974; purchased from her estate, in settlement of inheritance tax, by the museum, with the support of the BankGiro Loterij, the Cleyndert Fonds and the Stortenbeker Fonds of the Rembrandt Association, and the Rijksmuseum Fonds, 3 March 2008
Object number: SK-A-4999
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the BankGiro Lottery, the Fonds Cleyndert, the Stortenbeker Fonds of the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Rijksmuseum Fonds
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 1642.3 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 1658.4
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
In 2008 the Rijksmuseum acquired a small collection of family portraits all made by Johannes Verspronck that included this one of Eduard Wallis and the pendant of his wife Maria van Strijp (SK-A-5000; also fig. a).5 Their faces were not unfamiliar to regular visitors, for both works had been part of the permanent display since being given on loan to the museum in 1952.6 The two likenesses, which are still in their original frames,7 are among the finest paintings from the middle of Verspronck’s career and the lively yet restrained depictions are typical of his oeuvre.
It was not known who the sitters were when the pendants were first hung in the museum.8 They must have been identified as Eduard Wallis and Maria van Strijp soon afterwards, because that is how they are recorded in the 1960 collection catalogue.9 Wallis came from a family of Scottish wool merchants who emigrated via Zeeland to Haarlem, where the surname first appears in the archives in the early seventeenth century. He was involved in the cloth trade, as was his father and the family of Maria van Strijp, whom he married in 1647. Wallis was also a governor of the Alms, Poor and Work House in Haarlem and was depicted in that capacity in a group portrait of 1658 by Jacob van Loo.10
When Eduard Wallis and Maria van Strijp decided to have their portraits made in 1652 their choice fell on Verspronck, who had painted Maria’s mother Adriana Croes eight years earlier.11 He experimented with the composition by showing the couple sitting sideways on chairs – a device that he had introduced around 1650,12 and may have borrowed from Frans Hals.13 Wallis is shown in a self-assured but relaxed pose with one hand on his thigh and the other holding a hat, while his wife is at her ease with her left forearm resting on the back of the chair.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
For both the present painting (SK-A-4999) and its pendant (SK-A-5000)
R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, pp. 53, 115, no. 86, p. 116, no. 87; 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. 52-57
Collection catalogues
1960, p. 327, no. 2536 A 3; 1976, pp. 575-76, no. C 1414; 1992, p. 90, no. C 1414
Citation
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of Eduard Wallis (1621-1684), 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6437
(accessed 21 November 2024 18:41:09).