Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 119 cm × width 93.9 cm
sight size: height 117.6 cm × width 92.3 cm
frame: height 143.7 cm × width 118.5 cm
anonymous
Portrait of Karel van der Hoeven
c. 1605 - c. 1615
Inscriptions
- inscription, upper left: CAP,N VANDER, HOEF
Technical notes
The support is a plain-weave canvas that has been lined; the tacking edges were cut off during this procedure. There is a light-coloured ground layer. The face of the sitter seems to be painted on top of a monochrome greyish layer, visible in the more transparent areas. It is not clear if this layer is local or covers the entire surface of the painting. Infrared photography revealed no underdrawing, but pentimenti in the jerkin, which was initially shorter. In addition, it seems that the right side of the collar was originally intended to have been narrower. Furthermore, the sitter’s right thumb is painted on top of the clothing; initially it was painted more to the left. The painting is smoothly executed, with impasto for the highlights.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. Chavannes, RMA, 7 December 2004
- infrared photography: M. Chavannes, RMA, 7 December 2004
Condition
Fair. There are several stable folds at the top, discoloured areas of retouching, and a discoloured varnish with its own craquelure pattern.
Conservation
- D. van der Kellen, 1883: restored; canvas lined
Provenance
...; ? estate inventory, Frisian Stadholder’s Court, Leeuwarden, 16 August 1633, large blue room (‘Veertien stuck schildereien van capiteinen’), and the room next to the large room (‘Seeventien schildereien van capiteinen en ritmeisters.’);1 inventory of paintings, Frisian Stadholder’s Court, Leeuwarden, c. 1800, Garde du Corps Hall (‘14. Capt van der Hoef ’);2...; Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1876; transferred to the museum, 1885; on loan to the Nederlands Legermuseum, Delft, 1953-2000
Object number: SK-A-877
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
The inscription ‘CAP,N VANDER,HOEF’ at top left identifies the sitter as Captain Karel van der Hoeven, who was a sergeant-major in the Utrecht regiment in 1602 and 1604.3 The inscription ‘CAP,N’ indicates that he was later promoted to captain.
Originally, this portrait probably adorned the Stadholder’s Court in Leeuwarden along with four other officers’ portraits in the Rijksmuseum, those of Otto Brahe (SK-A-876), Eberhardt Hanekrodt (SK-A-875), Bartholomeus Andrio Walsdorffer (SK-A-1230) and Ripperda (SK-A-576). The earliest mention of such a series in the Court in Leeuwarden is found in an inventory of 1633, which mentions ‘fourteen paintings of captains’ and ‘seventeen paintings of captains and cavalry captains’.4 Mulder-Radetzky discovered a list made around 1800 in which 26 officers’ portraits in the Garde du Corps Hall of the Court are mentioned by name, enabling the five in the Rijksmuseum to be identified for the first time as having hung in the Stadholder’s Court.5 The present one is listed as number 14, ‘Capt van der Hoef ’.6 It emerges from the list that the paintings hung there until the court moved out at the end of the 18th century. Mulder-Radetzky assumed that all the portraits in the list formed a single series of staff officers of the Frisian regiment commanded by Count Willem Lodewijk of Nassau, who was in residence in the Court from 1587 to 1620.7 It is true that two of the officers portrayed, Walsdorffer (SK-A-1230) and Brahe (SK-A-876), commanded three companies in the pay of Friesland in 1609, along with Willem Lodewijk,8 but here was no such connection with Willem Lodewijk in the cases of Hanekrodt (SK-A-875) or Van der Hoeven. It is unlikely, then, that the portraits originally belonged to the same series. In addition, the five in the Rijksmuseum do not have matching dimensions, and they also differ from each other slightly in composition and execution. Since Hanekrodt served under Ernst Casimir, it is not inconceivable that some of the portraits entered the Stadholder’s Court with the latter when he took up residence there in 1620. The inscriptions are certainly old, but were probably added later, when the different portraits or series of portraits were merged, with the identities of the sitters being recorded for future generations.
At present it is impossible to provide an attribution for this portrait. The type of collar makes it likely the painting was executed between 1605 and 1615.9
Yvette Bruijnen, 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. 406.
Literature
Mulder-Radetzky 1997, pp. 197, 203
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 19, no. 194; 1976, p. 656, no. A 877; 2007, no. 406
Citation
Y. Bruijnen, 2007, 'anonymous, Portrait of Karel van der Hoeven, c. 1605 - c. 1615', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7041
(accessed 24 November 2024 23:54:53).