Portrait of Sir Peter Courten (1599-1624)

Entry

This and the following eight works are from the large group of family portraits in the De Witte van Citters Bequest. Most of the paintings from that collection have an inscription on the back with biographical information about the sitter, one or more coats of arms, and a number. In a few cases there is an old label on the back with biographical information written by Johan Boudaen Courten (1635-1716) (SK-A-2068 and SK-A-910, for example). Most of the portraits in the bequest hung in Kasteel Popkensburg in Zeeland, which had been in the family since 1653.⁵ A large group, including the present painting, entered the Rijksmuseum by way of the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst after the death in 1876 of the testator, Jonkheer Jacob de Witte van Citters. Another group was given on loan to his sister, Carolina Hester de Witte van Citters, and only entered the museum after the death of her husband, the well-known collector Arnoldus Andries des Tombe.⁶

Sir Peter Courten is shown full-length, wearing a doublet braided with passements, and a whisk made solely of needlepoint lace. His breeches and doublet are slashed. The fashionable costume and expensive accessories proclaim the sitter’s wealth, as does the Turkish carpet on the table.⁷

The young man’s identity has recently been the subject of discussion. According to an 18th- or 19th-century inscription on the back of the original canvas,⁸ he is William Courten.⁹ Willem Courten was born in 1607 and christened William in London on 29 November that year, and died between 1662 and 1666. He was the son of the rich silk and cloth merchant Sir William Courten (1572-1636) and his second wife, Hester Tryon. The younger William was barely nine or ten years old in 1617, whereas the sitter looks older and taller than a boy of that age.

Wolleswinkel suggested that the young man might be William’s half-brother, Peter Courten (1599-1624), the son of Sir William’s first marriage to a woman of the Crommelin family.¹⁰ Although the sitter’s features make him look a little younger, the 17 or 18-year-old Peter is a more plausible candidate than his half-brother, who was eight years his junior. This identification has been strengthened by the discovery of an 18th-century document in the family archives stating that the sitter is the son of Sir William Courten’s marriage to a Miss Crommelin.¹¹

Dudok van Heel put forward the theory that this portrait is by an English artist from the circle of the English portraitist Robert Peake (1551-1626), but apart from similarities in the composition and dress, there is little stylistic affinity.¹² Although full-length portraits were not very common in Dutch art around 1617,¹³ it is not that fanciful to look for the painter in the province of Zeeland. Thanks to a recent discovery by Ekkart, it is known that full-length portraits were already being made there in the 16th century.¹⁴ The young Courten had relatives living in Middelburg, and was himself buried there in 1624,¹⁵ so it is perfectly conceivable that his portrait was painted in Middelburg. The attribution to Salomon Mesdach has been retained in view of the stylistic similarities to the portraits of Peter’s relatives.¹⁶

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 173.