Officers and Other Civic Guardsmen of District XVIII in Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Albert Dircksz Bas and Lieutenant Lucas Pietersz Conijn

Entry

The earliest of the two civic guard portraits in his oeuvre, Govert Flinck executed this one in 1645 as the last of seven works made for the Great Hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, the headquarters of the arquebusiers’ civic guard.¹⁶ The unusual upright format is explained by the painting’s placement on the short wall facing the entrance, between the fireplace, above which his own Portrait of the Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen of 1642 hung,¹⁷ and the long wall opposite the windows (fig. a). This was the least advantageous space in the room, not only due to its verticality but also because the fireplace stuck out, blocking the daylight.

Hanging to the left of the fireplace was Joachim von Sandrart’s 1640 portrait of the civic guardsmen of district XIX.¹⁸ In their present forms, the latter work is 12 centimetres wider than Flinck’s, but both are approximately the same height – 338.7 centimetres (Flinck) and 341.3 centimetres (Von Sandrart). The difference in width has been chalked up to the wainscoting, which – it has been argued – may have varied on either side of the fireplace.¹⁹ However, both paintings have been cut down on the left and right.²⁰ In addition to a lack of cusping here in Flinck’s portrait, the composition continues over the edges of the strainer and the figures are truncated. Although it has been claimed that these two works would have been originally 381 centimetres high,²¹ research has now shown that the height of Von Sandrart’s picture was originally just 306 centimetres,²² while X-radiography of Flinck’s canvas indicates that it was only marginally trimmed at the top. Flinck, therefore, adapted the height neither to the painting on the same wall, nor to those on the long wall opposite the windows; in their present, cut-down states Rembrandt’s Night Watch and Jacob Backer’s guard piece exceed the height of Flinck’s canvas by 21 centimetres and 31 centimetres respectively.²³ In addition to being taller, Flinck’s portrait differed from Von Sandrart’s by having fewer figures – 12 as opposed to 19 – shown on a larger scale.

Unlike the guardsmen in the other portraits in the Great Hall, all of whose identities have been recorded in one way or another, the names of only two of Flinck’s sitters are known with certainty, that of the captain, Dr Albert Dircksz Bas (1598-1650), and the lieutenant, Lucas Pietersz Conijn (1597-1652). After acquiring a doctorate in law from Leiden University, Albert Bas held a number of posts in the municipal government of Amsterdam, including that of burgomaster in 1647.²⁴ The son of one of the founders of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Bas himself became a director of the West India Company (WIC) in 1645. At the time he was portrayed by Flinck he was living on Rokin, which was located in the district (XVIII) served by his company.²⁵ Based on his age and another documented likeness of him,²⁶ he must be the seated figure dressed in black, wearing an ornamental gorget and holding a commander’s baton.

Lucas Conijn, who lived on Oude Zijds Voorburgwal in district XVIII, was appointed lieutenant in 1633.²⁷ There has been some confusion about which figure he is in the painting, some scholars mistakenly identifying him as the seated guardsman in silver-coloured clothing at the bottom right of the composition.²⁸ Conijn, however, must be the standing man wearing a yellow buff coat on the left, as he holds a partisan, the weapon associated with the rank of lieutenant. About five years after the present work was completed, Conijn sat for Jacob Backer’s Portrait of the Regents of the Nieuwe Zijds Huiszittenhuis,²⁹ where he is probably the second seated figure seen in profile.³⁰ He is presumably also shown second from the left in a civic guard piece made in 1633 for district XVIII by Thomas de Keyser.³¹ Judging from the weapon he holds in that portrait, Conijn was one of the district’s two sergeants at the time. He eventually attained the rank of captain, being recorded in this capacity for district XXXVI in 1650.³²

Although the names of none of the other guardsmen have been recorded, two more can be identified. The standard bearer in Flinck’s portrait, and probably in De Keyser’s, may well have been Willem Claesz van Campen (1611-1661), a wine merchant and distant cousin of the painter and architect Jacob van Campen.³³ He was recorded as the ensign for district XXVI in 1650. In that year, the number of civic guard districts was increased from 20 to 54 and their borders redrawn. The street where Willem van Campen lived until shortly before his death, Sint-Luciënsteeg, fell within the boundaries of district XVIII prior to the reorganization.³⁴ Moreover, his age – in 1645 he was 34 and in 1633 22 years old – coincides well with that of the standard bearer depicted by Flinck and earlier by De Keyser.

According to Colenbrander, it was originally intended that Flinck’s canvas be completed at the same time as The Night Watch and the two other civic guard pieces of 1642 for the long wall of the Great Hall, and that the reason for commissioning all seven portraits for this space came from the appointments of The Night Watch’s Frans Banninck Cocq and the present picture’s Albert Bas as captains of their respective companies.³⁵ In order to account for the fact that the painting of Bas’s company was only finished in 1645, Colenbrander suggested that Flinck may have taken the project over from another artist, or that he himself was negligent or simply slow in executing it.³⁶ However, the visual evidence firmly repudiates the notion that Flinck went to work on it at such an early date. A remarkable feature of his portrait is the presence of the man in silver in the lower right corner. Like Captain Bas, he is the only other seated figure and he also holds a commander’s baton. He is most likely a second captain and the painting does, therefore, probably commemorate a change of command, only not the one Colenbrander assumes it does. Unfortunately, it is not known precisely when Albert Bas became captain of district XVIII, only that it must have been between 1638, when Jacob Simonsz de Vries (1573-1654) is last reported as occupying that rank,³⁷ and 20 May 1642, when Bas is recorded as one of the civic guard captains present at the ‘joyeuse entrée’ into Amsterdam of Queen Henrietta Maria of England.³⁸ The mystery figure, at any rate, is certainly not De Vries, as he would have been in his 70s at the time and he already looks like an old man in Thomas de Keyser’s 1633 portrait.³⁹ It seems more likely that he is Bas’s successor, Frans Pietersz Reael (1618-1669), who would have been about 27 at the time.⁴⁰ Frans Reael, whose father Pieter Jansz Reael was one of the governors who sat for Flinck in 1642,⁴¹ was first recorded as captain of district XVIII in 1647, but it is perfectly conceivable that he had succeeded Bas earlier. Our knowledge of who held that rank in Amsterdam’s 20 civic guard companies, and in which years, is based on the notes made by Gerard Schaep, one of its members.⁴² Schaep, however, was living in Middelburg between 1639 and 1646, and thus did not jot anything down for those years.⁴³ When he returned to Amsterdam in 1647 he recorded that Frans Pietersz Reael was captain of district XVIII, unwittingly giving the impression that his appointment took place in that year. Unfortunately there are no documented portraits of the latter with which the figure in silver can be compared.⁴⁴

Reynier Schaep, who succeeded Lucas Conijn as lieutenant in 1646, may also be one of the civic guardsmen depicted. If he is identical with the merchant of that name living on Rokin in district XVIII between 1586 and 1660,⁴⁵ he could – based on his age – be either the man directly to the left of the ensign or the one on the far left. While Flinck’s portrait diverges from the norm because of the inclusion of an extra high-ranking officer, it is also peculiar because of the seeming absence of the usual two sergeants each company had. Recognizable by the halberds they carry they were included in almost every seventeenth-century civic guard piece. They are probably present here, only the blades of their halberds are not visible because the picture was trimmed down.⁴⁶

The triangular composition of this painting with its top to the right mirrors that of Von Sandrart’s portrait.⁴⁷ Although Flinck’s use of a staircase has been attributed to the influence of Flemish art on his oeuvre,⁴⁸ this strategy for exploiting the great height of the canvas was already employed not only by Von Sandrart but also by Jacob Backer in his 1642 piece. The diagonal created by the staircase is intersected by the diagonal formed by the flag held by the ensign, again as in Von Sandrart’s arrangement.⁴⁹ The calculated placement of some of the figures’ arms and bodies in Flinck’s painting skillfully reinforces the main converging diagonals. The poses of Lieutenant Conijn and the guardsman at the top of the stairs may have been inspired by two compositions of the Adoration of the Magi by Rubens, as Sluijter has suggested.⁵⁰ Conijn’s stance, however, echoes that of Lieutenant Frederick van Banchem in Von Sandrart’s portrait, and the similarities between the frontally posed guardsman and the large, centrally placed Magus in Rubens’s Adoration executed for Sint-Michielsabdij in Antwerp (never reproduced in print) are, perhaps, coincidental.

The work’s light tonality, which is also a feature of some of Flinck’s individual portraits from around the same time,⁵¹ compensated for the ill-lit corner in the Great Hall where it hung, and the contrast with Rembrandt’s much darker Night Watch next to it on the long wall must have been great. Indeed, there is nothing in Flinck’s picture to remind one of his training with Rembrandt. This notwithstanding, the paint has been applied in a remarkably loose manner – probably a consequence of the canvas’s great size – and is quite unlike the polished treatment, already present in some of Flinck’s individual portraits of 1645, that would characterize his style for the rest of his career.

A number of scholars have commented on the elegance of the figures in Flinck’s picture, chalking this up to his attempt to rival Bartholomeus van der Helst’s 1643 civic guard piece in the same hall, as well as to the possible influence of Anthony van Dyck.⁵² While the impact on Flinck of Van der Helst’s painting is readily apparent, the suggestion made by one scholar that the poses of three of Flinck’s sitters were derived from Van Dyck’s 1645 published Iconography,⁵³ is not entirely convincing. One of them is that of the figure in the centre holding his hand over his heart. A sign of faithfulness, this was a frequently occurring portrait gesture by 1645.⁵⁴ It occurs no fewer than three times in Backer’s 1642 piece in the Great Hall, and Flinck himself had already used it in his 1643 Portrait of Pieter Jansz Reael.⁵⁵ A likelier source for the figure leaning on the balustrade than the Portrait of Hubert van den Eynden in Van Dyck’s Iconography is Von Sandrart’s and Backer’s pictures in the Great Hall. It was, after all, the staircases in those works that very probably determined the composition of Flinck’s canvas. The final pose considered to be derived from the Iconography is the open-handed ‘speaking’ gesture of Captain Bas, but this too was already present in the hall in the paintings to the right and left of Flinck’s civic guard piece: The Night Watch and Flinck’s own Portrait of the Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen.⁵⁶ Rather than looking to Flemish sources in order to set his picture apart from the others in the Great Hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, Flinck appears to have drawn from those portraits, perhaps with an eye to fitting in.

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements