Object data
oil on panel
support: height 74.3 cm × width 59.8 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Gerard van Honthorst (workshop of)
in or after c. 1651
oil on panel
support: height 74.3 cm × width 59.8 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
The support consists of three vertically grained oak planks and is bevelled on all sides. 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 light-coloured ground is visible under the sitter’s hair. The paint has in general been smoothly applied, with brushstrokes visible in the costume and impasto highlights.
Good. The darker passages are slightly abraded and a few retouchings are visible in the right background. The somewhat discoloured varnish is matte.
...; acquired by the museum, possibly with SK-A-176 and SK-A-574, before 9 February 1801;1 on loan to the Oranje-Nassau Museum, The Hague, 1933-59; on loan through the DRVK, 1959-65
Object number: SK-A-573
Copyright: Public domain
Gerard van Honthorst (Utrecht 1592 - Utrecht 1656)
Gerard van Honthorst was born in Utrecht on 4 November 1592 into a family of artists. His father, Herman Gerritsz van Honthorst, was a decorative painter and probably his first teacher. According to Von Sandrart and Houbraken, Honthorst trained with Abraham Bloemaert. When exactly he went to Italy is not known; a drawn copy after Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St Peter in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo is dated 1616,2 indicating that he was in Rome by that year. His first documented painting, The Beheading of St John the Baptist, was executed for the Church of Santa Maria della Scala in 1617-18.3 Such Caravaggesque night scenes, which often include artificial sources of illumination, garnered Honthorst the nickname ‘Gherardo delle Notti’ in Italy. Among his Roman patrons were the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, in whose house Honthorst lived, and Cardinal Scipione Borghese.
A few months after his return to Utrecht in 1620, Honthorst married Sophia Coopmans. He joined the Guild of St Luke there and set up his own workshop. Von Sandrart, one of his apprentices in the 1620s, informs us that Honthorst had as many as 25 pupils at a time, from each of whom he received the sizable tuition fee of 100 guilders a year. With the exception of 1627, Honthorst served as dean of the guild between 1625 and 1630. It was also in the mid-1620s that he received his first commission from the court of Frederik Hendrik in The Hague.4 A commission from the British ambassador in The Hague, Sir Dudley Carleton, for Lord Arundel came as early as 16205 and eventually led to the invitation from Charles I to work on Banqueting House in Whitehall in 1628.6 Honthorst returned to the United Provinces the same year, but continued to work for the English court in the years to come. In 1630 he became court painter to the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia, Frederick V and Elizabeth, in The Hague. Honthorst also painted numerous portraits of the Stadholder and his wife, Amalia van Solms, and took part in the decoration of, among others, the palaces Honselaarsdijk, Huis ter Nieuburch (1636-39) and Huis ten Bosch (1649-50). In order to accommodate his work in The Hague, he set up a second workshop there in 1637 and joined the guild, serving as dean in 1640. Also in 1637, he became the principal artist to decorate the Banqueting Hall in Kronborg Castle for King Christian IV of Denmark. Honthorst was, perhaps, the most internationally successful Dutch artist of his time. Despite, or possibly as a result of this success, his late style was criticized as ‘stiff ’ and ‘slick’ (‘stijve gladdicheyt’) and he was esteemed a ‘much less great master than themselves’ (‘beaucoup moins grand maistre qu’eux’) by his fellow artists working on the Oranjezaal.7 He died on 27 April 1656 and was buried in the Catharijnekerk in Utrecht.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Mancini c. 1620, fol. 86 (Judson/Ekkart 1999, p. 47); Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 22, 102, 172-74; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 149-50; Braun 1966, pp. 7-59, 340-88 (documents); Bok in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1986, pp. 276-79; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 382-83; Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. XXXIII-XXXIV, 1-24
This portrait of Amalia van Solms in a painted oval frame is based on the sitter’s likeness in Honthorst’s large portrait of Frederik Hendrik and family (SK-A-874), which was probably executed in 1647. The costume is exactly the same in both paintings. The coiled braid, however, has been simplified, and appears accordingly rather odd. Undoubtedly the product of Honthorst’s large studio, the execution of the sitter’s face is nonetheless not without merit. The handling of the drapery, in contrast, is lacklustre. Dendrochronology of the panel suggests that the painting was executed in or after c. 1651.
This portrait possibly belonged to a series including the Portrait of Louise Christina (SK-A-574) and Portrait of an Officer (SK-A-176) by Honthorst and his studio in the Rijksmuseum.8
Jonathan Bikker, 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. 147.
Moes/Van Biema 1909, p. 196; Judson/Ekkart 1999, p. 235, no. 296, version 16, with earlier literature
1801, ? p. 47, no. 4; 1809, ? p. 91, no. 406 (as Anonymous); 1853, ? p. 35, no. 379 (as Anonymous; fl. 150); 1858, p. 255, no. 509 (as Anonymous); 1885, p. 64, no. 435 (as Anonymous); 1887, p. 70, no. 558 (as Dutch School, first half or middle of the 17th century); 1903, p. 133, no. 1240 (as Honthorst); 1976, p. 286, no. A 573; 2007, no. 147
J. Bikker, 2007, 'workshop of Gerard van Honthorst, Portrait of Amalia van Solms (1602-75), in or after c. 1651', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8763
(accessed 19 September 2024 19:24:40).