Object data
oil on panel
support: height 127.5 cm × width 94 cm
Paulus Moreelse
1625
oil on panel
support: height 127.5 cm × width 94 cm
The support consists of two vertically grained oak planks and is bevelled on all sides. There appear to be two ground layers, yellow ochre over grey. Brushmarking has been kept to a minimum. There is a pentimento in the figure’s hand; the thumb was originally larger.
Good. There are some discoloured retouchings in the figure’s face and collar.
An oak truncated box frame, painted black with gilded sight edge and transitional section1
...; ? through the family of the sitter to Maarten Iman Pauw (1774-1846), The Hague; his son, Matthieu Christiaan Hendrik Pauw van Wieldrecht (1816-95), The Hague (placed in the Grote Zaal of the Oude Mannenhuis, The Hague, 1846-52);2 his son, Maarten Iman ridder Pauw van Wieldrecht (1860-1913), Kasteel Broekhuizen, Leersum; his son, Reinier ridder Pauw van Wieldrecht (1893-1939), The Hague, but given in usufruct to Maria Pauw van Wieldrecht-Repelaer (1863-1939), Kasteel Broekhuizen, Leersum;...; on loan from a private collector to the museum, since 1953
Object number: SK-C-1440
Credit line: On loan from a private collector
Copyright: Public domain
Paulus Moreelse (Utrecht c. 1571 - Utrecht 1638)
De Bie was the first author to give Moreelse’s year of birth; the artist’s baptismal record has not come down to us. His father, Jan Jansz Moreelse, was a cooper from Louvain. According to his 17th- and 18th-century biographers, Moreelse studied for two years with Michiel van Mierevelt, probably in Delft, and then spent a long period in Italy, where he received numerous portrait commissions in Rome. None of the paintings executed by Moreelse in Italy are known today. He returned to Utrecht by 1596, when he reportedly joined the saddlers’ guild, to which painters also belonged. In 1602 Moreelse married Antonia van Wintershoven. Because the ceremony took place in the town hall of Utrecht, Moreelse would not have been a member of the Reformed Church at this point. Later, however, he did join that congregation. His first dated painting, a Portrait of a Man is also from 1602.3 In the spring of 1611, Moreelse was elected dean of the saddlers’ guild and in September of the same year he became the first dean of the newly founded Guild of St Luke. He held this post again in 1612, 1615 and 1619. Twenty-eight pupils are recorded as having trained with Moreelse from 1611 on, more than with any other guild member. Together with Abraham Bloemaert, Moreelse was also one of the principal teachers at the drawing academy set up in Utrecht some time after the painters’ guild gained independence. Among Moreelse’s pupils were Dirck van Baburen (1594/95-1624), Pieter Portengen (c. 1612-43) and Jan ter Borch (?-1676). Two of his sons, Johan (after 1602-34) and Benjamin (before 1629-51), also became painters, and one of his daughters is reported to have assisted Moreelse with the execution of a portrait.
Moreelse was chiefly active as a portrait painter. In addition to his many portraits of Utrecht’s leading citizens, he received commissions from court circles, such as the 1621 Portrait of Sophia Hedwig, Countess of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, as Caritas, with her Children.4 Moreelse’s 1616 Officers and other Civic Guardsmen of the IIIrd District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Jacob Gerritsz Hoyngh and Lieutenant Nanningh Florisz Cloeck (SK-C-623) is the only civic guard piece by a Utrecht painter to have survived. Moreelse also painted histories and genre pieces, and is credited with introducing the single-figure shepherdess into Dutch painting. His activities as an architect include a plan for enlarging Utrecht (executed posthumously in 1663) and the design of the Catherijnepoort (1621-25; destroyed), one of the town gates. After having supported Prince Maurits’s dismissal of Utrecht’s town council in 1618, Moreelse was given a seat on the new town council, which he occupied until his death. He also served as churchwarden of the Buurkerk, headman of the civic guard, an alderman, and chief treasurer of Utrecht. Paulus Moreelse died on 6 March 1638 and was buried in the Buurkerk.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 280v; De Bie 1661, p. 131; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 171, 178; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 49; Hoevenaar 1778, p. 9; Swillens 1926; De Jonge 1938, pp. 1-7, 139-53 (documents); Bok in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1986, pp. 322-25; Bok in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 311-12; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, p. 386; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2000; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, pp. 13-60, 203-50 (documents)
The female pendant to the present portrait was lost in a fire at Kasteel Broekhuizen in Leersum on 5 October 1906. The earliest mention of the pair in the collection of the Pauw family occurs in a manuscript catalogue from around the middle of the 19th century, at which time the sitters were identified as Reijnier Reijniersz Pauw (1591-1676) and his wife Clara Alewijn (1600-30).5 Reijnier Pauw was a member of the Council of State between 1621 and 1655, and from 1655 until his death president of the Supreme Court. In a 1905 catalogue of the same collection, the sitters were for the first time given the names of Reijnier’s brother Michiel Pauw (1590-1640) and his wife Hillegonda Spiegel (1599-1677).6
The identification of the man’s portrait as Michiel Pauw was accepted by all subsequent scholars until Wolleswinkel argued in 1993 and 1994 for reinstating the older identification.7 The resemblance between the man in Moreelse’s painting and a substantiated portrait of Michiel Pauw from around 1620 is slight. Another reason for excluding Michiel Pauw as a candidate is the fact that he became a knight in the Order of St Mark in 1623 and the man in Moreelse’s portrait is not shown wearing a medal.8
According to Wolleswinkel, the man in Moreelse’s portrait resembles Reijnier Pauw as he was portrayed later in life in an engraving from 1658 by Theodor Matham after Jan Mijtens.9 Wolleswinkel also suggests that the present portrait and its now lost pendant were the ones showing Reijnier Pauw and his wife listed in the 1637 estate inventory of Clara Alewijn’s father Dirck Alewijn and the 1665 inventory of her brother Frederik Alewijn. Wolleswinkel’s identification, however, is far from certain, as the resemblance between Moreelse’s sitter and the man portrayed in Matham’s engraving can be questioned. The 1637 and 1665 inventories, moreover, do not list the artist who painted the portraits, and it cannot be demonstrated that it was those portraits that had entered the collection of the Pauw family by the middle of the 19th century.10 An argument against Wolleswinkel’s identification, according to Domela Nieuwenhuis, is the fact that Reijnier Pauw lived in The Hague in 1625 and does not appear to have had any contacts with Utrecht.11 Be this as it may, it cannot be demonstrated that any member of the Pauw family had contacts with Utrecht around 1625.12 As no other member of the Pauw family is a likely candidate, Wolleswinkel’s identification of the sitter as Reijnier Pauw should be retained, at least as a possibility.
There are four extant three-quarter length portrait pairs by Moreelse from 1625.13 The male sitters are all shown in a similar manner. In the Portrait of a Member of the Strick Family (Dirck Strick?),14 the composition is identical to that of the present portrait: the sitter holds a pair of gloves in his right hand and his left hand is pressed into his side. In both portraits he is shown beside a table, upon which his hat has been laid. The bright red tablecloth in the Portrait of a Member of the Strick Family makes for a stronger colour accent than the dark green tablecloth in the present painting. These monumental knee-length portraits from 1625 form a high point in Moreelse’s oeuvre; the meticulous representation of the costumes and the plasticity of the faces, devoid of the sfumato Moreelse employed before this period, are here at their strongest.
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. 219.
De Jonge 1938, p. 89, no. 78 (as Portrait of Michiel Pauw); Wolleswinkel 1993, pp. 163, 169 (as Portrait of Reijnier Pauw); Wolleswinkel 1994, pp. 121-23, 134, 137 (as Portrait of Reijnier Pauw); Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, II, pp. 455-57, no. SAP85a, with earlier literature (as Portrait of a Man from the Pauw Family); Middelkoop 2002, p. 27, note 16 (as Portrait of Reijnier Pauw)
1960, p. 215, no. 1664 (as Portrait of Michiel Pauw); 1976, p. 397, no. C 1440 (as Portrait of Michiel Pauw); 2007, no. 219
J. Bikker, 2007, 'Paulus Moreelse, Portrait of a Man, possibly Reijnier Pauw (1591-1676), 1625', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4647
(accessed 20 September 2024 14:28:49).