Object data
oil on panel
support: height 98 cm × width 76 cm
outer size: depth 5.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-3165)
Johannes Verspronck
Portrait of Maria van Strijp (1627-1707)
1652
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower right, on the back of the chair (‘ver’ ligated): Joh. C verSpronck f anº 1652.
Technical notes
Support The panel consists of three vertically grained, butt-joined oak planks (approx. 24.9, 28.7 and 22.4 cm), approx. 0.5-0.8 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled at the top and bottom, and has regularly spaced saw marks. A mark of a St Andrew’s cross is scratched into the upper part of the middle plank. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1633. The panel could have been ready for use by 1644, but a date in or after 1650 is more likely. The middle plank is from the same tree as that of the pendant (SK-A-4999).
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the edges of the support, running over them in a few places. The first, thin, white layer primarily fills the grain of the wood and is followed by a whitish-pink layer consisting of fine and coarse white pigment particles with an addition of black and fine earth pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography revealed an underdrawing in a dry medium, consisting of loose, sketchy lines roughly indicating the contours of the face and the positions of the hair, eyes, nose, mouth and collar.
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 greyish-brown layer. The hands and the face, which was undermodelled with translucent browns, were built up wet in wet and from dark to light. The dress was first laid in with a rather monochrome dark grey, reserving the woman’s left hand, after which darker and lighter grey paints were added, wet in wet, to form the folds and the black bands of lace. The fan was executed on top of the hand and the background, with the individual leaves and ribs incised into the wet paint, exposing thin strips of the underlying layer. The pattern of the black lace was also scratched into the wet paint, revealing the first lay-in of the dress. The green and yellow petticoat was applied with just a few bold brushstrokes and limited modelling on top of the background, as was the part of the skirt peeping out from under the lower rail of the chair. The white lace of the collar and cuffs was done with a thin brush, partly on top of the dress. The second, darker grey-brown layer of the background was applied, starting at the upper left corner, creating an illusion of depth. The highlights in the eyes and on the nose were added last. X-radiography and infrared reflectography revealed that the initial painted version of the collar was narrower on the left and extended further down. The paint surface is smooth, with some slight impasto in the highlights of the headband, brooch and rings.
Anna Krekeler, 2024
Scientific examination and reports
- paint samples: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, nos. SK-A-5000/1-5, 8 July 2008
- X-radiography: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 1835 (1-6), 14 July 2008
- infrared reflectography: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 7 November 2008
- technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 5 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
- E. Smeenk-Metz, 2008 - 2009: complete restoration
Original framing
A dark brown fruitwood scotia frame1
Provenance
For both the present painting (SK-A-5000) and its pendant (SK-A-4999)
? 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-5000
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 Maria Strijp and the pendant of her husband Eduard Wallis (SK-A-4999; 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 Maria van Strijp and Eduard Wallis soon afterwards, because that is how they are recorded in the 1960 collection catalogue.9 Maria and Eduard, who like his father and Maria’s family was involved in the cloth trade, married in 1647. When the couple decided to have their portraits made five years later, they commissioned Verspronck, who had painted Maria’s mother Adriana Croes in 1644.10 He experimented with the composition by showing the couple sitting sideways on chairs – a device that he had introduced around 1650,11 and may have borrowed from Frans Hals.12 Whereas her husband is shown in a self-assured but relaxed pose with one hand on his thigh and the other holding a hat, Maria is at her ease with her left forearm resting on the back of the chair. In her right hand she is holding a fan that is cut off by the edge of the picture. Her sumptuous attire and jewellery contrast with the rather sober and slightly old-fashioned dress of her mother in Verspronck’s painting of eight years earlier. It appears from Maria van Strijp’s probate inventory of 1707 that there was another portrait of her in addition to this one of 1652.13
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
For both the present painting (SK-A-5000) and its pendant (SK-A-4999)
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 4; 1976, p. 576, no. C 1415; 1992, p. 90, no. C 1415
Citation
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of Maria van Strijp (1627-1707), 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6436
(accessed 24 November 2024 04:22:23).