Object data
black chalk, on blue paper
height 231 mm × width 235 mm
Aleijda Wolfsen (attributed to), after Caspar Netscher
Study of Two Female Arms
The Hague, c. 1675
Inscriptions
-
stamped on verso: centre left (with the sheet turned 90°), with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
Watermark: None
Literature scientific examination and reports
P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, pp. 98, 140 (under no. 71, as Theodorus or Constantijn Netscher)
Provenance
…; from the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam, with inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2283, fl. 2 for both, to the museum (L. 2228), April 1890
Object number: RP-T-1890-A-2282
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Aleida Wolfsen (Zwolle 1648 - Zwolle 1692)
She was born on 24 October 1648, the daughter of the wealthy burgomaster of Zwolle, Hendrik Wolfsen (1615-1684), and his wife, Aleijda Verwers (1626-1665). The family moved to The Hague in 1657, and she remained there for a decade until her marriage in Rijkswijk on 5 October 1667 to another burgomaster of Zwolle, Pieter Soury (1645-1695).1 Following her marriage to Soury – by whom she had ten surviving children2 – the couple lived for a year in The Hague (1667), before moving into the former Wolfsen family home in Zwolle (1667-72 and 1674-92), which they kept, even after their move back to The Hague (1672-73 and 1683) and to Amsterdam (1673-74). Aleida is generally assumed to have studied with Caspar Netscher (c. 1635/36-1684) in The Hague around 1670,3 but dated portraits from 16634 and 16675 suggest that such training, if it occurred, took place before her marriage. She was certainly close to Netscher in later years, serving as a witness to the baptism of two of his children (in 1673 and 1678). She practised as a portrait painter in the manner of her presumed teacher, undertaking commissions from family and friends, and was nicknamed the ‘Penseel-Princes’ (‘Brush princess’) by Jacob Campo Weyerman. Her latest signed work is from 1691, the Portrait of a Young Woman in the Stichting Het Vrouwenhuis, Zwolle. She died on 25 August 1692 in childbirth with her fifteenth baby, a boy called Coenraad Willem.6
Jane Shoaf Turner, 2025
References
J.C. Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, 4 vols., The Hague/Dordrecht 1729-69, IV (1769), p. 336; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, 3 vols., Vienna/Leipzig 1906-11, II (1910), p. 898; ; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXXVI (1947), p. 225; E. Buijsen (ed.), Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw. Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag, 1600-1700, Zwolle 1998, p. 361; C.P. Sengers et al., Lexicon van Noord-Nederlandse kunstenaressen, circa 1550-1800 Hilversum 1998, p. 174; S. van Cauwerberge et al., Elck zijn waerom. Vrouwelijke kunstenaars in België en Nederland, 1500–1950 Ghent 1999, pp. 188-89; M.E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting, Doornspijk 2002 (Aetas Aurea: Monographs on Dutch & Flemish Painting, vol. 16), pp. 121-22; E. Wolleswinkel, ‘Er was eens een penseelprinses... en zij heette Aleijda Wolfsen’, Jaarboek Die Haghe 2015, pp. 72-95; https://rkd.nl/artists/85402; https://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Wolfsen
Entry
Within the studio of Caspar Netscher (c. 1635/36-1684), studies on blue paper were used not only as working material but also as models for training pupils.7 The present sheet is an example of that practice. Its prototype is also preserved in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1890-A-2375). Whereas it features more sophisticated modelling by means of the gentle blending of the black and white chalk, the present sheet, by contrast, reveals a more graphic approach with comparably rigid hatching. Apart from such subtle differences in draughtsmanship, the copyist carefully followed his model, including such details as the short accents along the shaded edges of the arm, fingers and drapery.
The copy must surely have been made under Caspar’s supervision – and with his approval. A terminus port quem is provided by the fact that the original prototype was inscribed with the date ‘1675’ by Mattheus Verheyden (1700-1777) and was used by Caspar for his Portrait of Elisabeth van Bebber (1643-1704) in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (inv. no. 714), a painting dated either 1675 or 1677 (the last digit being illegible).8
The copyist could be one of several artists trained by Netscher. Schatborn suggested one of Caspar’s sons, either Theodorus Netscher (1661-1728) or Constantijn Netscher (1668-1723). A more likely option emerges from the fact that the poses of both hands coincide almost exactly (though held a further apart) with the arms in a signed and dated painting of 1675 by Aleida Wolfsen formerly on the art market (fig. a).9 Wolfsen is documented as having been on close terms with the Netscher family in the 1670s and may well have been trained by Caspar, and it seems she made and exploited her copy of his drawing the same year as the original. The only other drawing that can be reasonably assigned to Aleida is also in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1886-A-605).
Annemarie Stefes, 2018
Citation
A. Stefes, 2018, 'attributed to Aleijda Wolfsen, Study of Two Female Arms, The Hague, c. 1675', in J. Turner (ed.), (under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200142967
(accessed 10 December 2025 19:04:07).