Object data
oil on panel
support: height 71.6 cm × width 60.3 cm
outer size: depth 6 cm (support incl. frame)
Cornelis van der Voort (follower of)
Portrait of a Man
in or after c. 1648
Inscriptions
- date, centre left: A.º 1619
- inscription, centre left: Ætatis 54
Technical notes
The support is an oak panel consisting of three vertically grained planks. Bevels on the top and bottom edges and traces of the ground and paint along the left and right edges indicate that the panel has retained its original dimensions. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1631. The panel could have been ready for use by 1642, but a date in or after 1648 is more likely. The thin ground layer is off-white. The broad brushstrokes visible under the paint layer are either from the ground layer or from an imprimatura. The portrait is executed in a smooth and schematic manner. The paint was applied thickly and opaquely with some impasto in the sitter’s ruff. The sitter’s moustache was reserved in the ruff.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 18 May 2005
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 21 September 2005
Condition
Fair. The edges of the panel are damaged. There is raised paint along the grain and there are scratches in the paint layer at bottom centre. The varnish was applied unevenly.
Provenance
...; on loan to the museum from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap since 1889
Object number: SK-C-1553
Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Cornelis van der Voort (? Antwerp c. 1576 - Amsterdam 1624)
Cornelis van der Voort, who was probably born in Antwerp around 1576, came to Amsterdam with his parents as a child. His father, a cloth weaver by trade, received his citizenship in 1592. It is not known who taught the young Van der Voort to paint, but it has been suggested that it was either Aert Pietersz or Cornelis Ketel. On 24 October 1598 Van der Voort became betrothed to Truytgen Willemsdr. After his first wife’s death he became betrothed to Cornelia Brouwer of Dordrecht in 1613. In addition to being an artist, Van der Voort was an art collector or dealer, or both. In 1607 he bought paintings from the estate of Gillis van Coninxloo, and after an earlier sale in 1610 a large number of works he owned were auctioned on 7 April 1614. Van der Voort is documented as appraising paintings in 1612, 1620 and 1624. In 1615 and 1619 he was warden of the Guild of St Luke. He was buried in Amsterdam’s Zuiderkerk on 2 November 1624, and on 13 May 1625 paintings in his estate were sold at auction.
Van der Voort was one of Amsterdam’s leading portrait painters in the first quarter of the 17th century. Several of his group portraits are known. It is believed that he trained Thomas de Keyser (1596/97-1667) and Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy (1588-1650/56). His documented pupils were David Bailly (c. 1584/86-1657), Louis du Pré (dates unknown), Pieter Luycx (dates unknown), Dirk Harmensz (dates unknown) and his own son Pieter (dates unknown).
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 300r; Orlers 1641, p. 371; De Roever 1885, pp. 187-207 (documents); De Roever 1887; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, p. 544; Briels 1997, p. 402
Entry
This bust-length portrait is of an unknown, 54-year-old man. Since the painting has no provenance it is not at present possible to identify him. The rather sketchy execution suggests that it is a copy. There is no known original, but on the evidence of the stylistic relationship to the work of the Amsterdam portraitist Cornelis van der Voort it is assumed that it is based on one of his paintings.1 The 1619 date on the present painting would have been copied from the prototype. Dendrochronology, which provides a likely date of execution in or after 1648, indicates that this copy was made some 30 years after the original.2
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. 327.
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 290, no. 2593 (as copy after Cornelis van der Voort); 1976, p. 589, no. C 1553 (as copy after Cornelis van der Voort); 2007, no. 327
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'follower of Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of a Man, in or after c. 1648', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.11952
(accessed 13 November 2024 18:01:15).