Object data
oil on panel
support: height 76.3 cm × width 62.1 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-4058)
Johannes Verspronck
Portrait of Johan Gerritsz van Schoterbosch (c. 1564-1654)
1647
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower right (‘ver’ ligated): J ver Spronck an◦ 1647
- inscription, lower right (A and E ligated): AEtatis 83
Technical notes
Support The panel consists of three vertically grained, butt-joined oak planks (approx. 11.6, 29.2 and 21.3 cm), approx. 0.7 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1627. The panel could have been ready for use by 1638, but a date in or after 1644 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The thin double ground extends up to the edges of the support, running over them in a few places. The first, slightly translucent off-white layer is followed by a much thinner off-white layer consisting of white pigment with a minute addition of small black and earth pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography and infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in a dry medium, also partly visible to the naked eye, consisting of sketchy lines describing the hair, facial features and collar. The hand was underdrawn in a wet medium, probably a black paint.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support, running over them in a few places. The background was applied in two layers. The sitter was left in reserve in the initial, light brown layer. The face was first indicated with translucent browns and then carefully built up from dark to light, leaving the undermodelling partially exposed around the sitter’s left eye and cheek, and in the beard. The coat was underpainted with dark grey and worked up with blacks, applied wet in wet, to create the folds, and light greys for the fur trimming. The hand, which was left in reserve in the clothes, and the collar were rendered with less detail than the face. The second layer of the background, consisting of a thin, translucent dark brown glaze, was added to create depth. Small adjustments were made to the contours, sometimes continuing over the finished background. The paint surface is smooth overall, with some impasto in the face, collar and highlights.
Anna Krekeler, 2024
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 18 July 2008
- paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-1253/1-2, 18 July 2008
- technical report: E. Smeenk-Metz / Z. Benders / A. Krekeler, RMA, 18 July 2008
- infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 17 March 2011
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 3 May 2011
- infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 17 June 2013
- infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 20 August 2013
Literature scientific examination and reports
A. Krekeler et al., ‘Consistent Choices: A Technical Study of Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck’s Portraits in the Rijksmuseum’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 62 (2014), pp. 2-23
Condition
Fair. The left join is slightly open at the bottom. The reverse of the panel is coated with wax. The wood grain has become clearly visible due to the increased transparency of both the ground and the paint. The latter tents slightly along the wood grain and has a deep scratch between the nose and mouth. Residues of old varnish are visible in the interstices of the paint layer in the lighter areas. The thick and uneven varnish has yellowed and saturates poorly.
Provenance
? Commissioned by or for the sitter; ? his daughter, Brechtje Overrijn van Schoterbosch (1592-1618), Amsterdam; ? her daughter, Aegje Hasselaer (1617-1664), Amsterdam; ? her husband, Henrick Hooft (1617-1678), Amsterdam; ? his daughter, Brechje Hooft (1640-1721), Amsterdam; ? her son, Jan van de Poll (1668-1745), Amsterdam; ? his son, Harmen Hendrik van de Poll (1697-1772), Amsterdam; ? his wife, Margaretha Trip (1699-1778); her son, Jan van de Poll (1721-1801), Amsterdam;1 his grandson, Jan van de Poll (1777-1858), Amsterdam, 1802 (stored with other family portraits in his aunt’s house, 479 Herengracht, Amsterdam); his son, Jan Stanislaus Robert van de Poll (1805-1888), Arnhem (stored with 25 other family portraits in his sister-in-law’s house, 450 Herengracht, Amsterdam); by whom donated to the museum, as Portrait of a Man, with 34 other family portraits, November 1885;2 on loan to the Fondation Custodia, Paris, 1954-58
Object number: SK-A-1253
Credit line: Gift of Jonkheer J.S.R. van de Poll, Arnhem
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Johannes Verspronck (Haarlem 1600/03 - Haarlem 1662)
Johannes Verspronck, who is sometimes wrongly called Gerard Sprong in older sources on the basis of passages in Schrevelius and Houbraken, was born on an unknown date. Early authors favoured 1597 or 1606-09, but it has since been established that the place and year of his birth must have been Haarlem between 1600 and 1603. He came from a fairly prosperous family who probably subscribed to the Catholic faith. His most likely teacher was his father, Cornelis Engelsz of Gouda, a painter of portraits and kitchen still lifes. It is also assumed on stylistic grounds that the young Verspronck was apprenticed to Frans Hals. He registered with the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1632, as did his younger brother Jochem, none of whose works has survived. Verspronck never held guild office, although he was once, in 1644, a candidate for the post of warden. He never married, and continued living in his parents’ house with an unwed sister and brother. The three of them later bought a neighbouring property. It is clear from the fact that he loaned several sums of money to family members that he was not poor. He was buried in Haarlem’s Grote Kerk on 30 June 1662.
Verspronck was one of the leading portraitists of seventeenth-century Haarlem. His known oeuvre consists of more than 100 paintings, all but one or two in that genre. They include two group portraits: The Regentesses of the Grote or St Elizabeth Hospital in Haarlem of 1641 and The Regentesses of the Holy Spirit Almshouse in Haarlem of 1642.3 Houbraken’s statement that Verspronck also produced civic guard pieces is probably due to confusion with the father’s work. His earliest dated pictures are from 1634 and the last one, a likeness of the parish priest Augustinus Alstenius Bloemert, from 1658.4
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024
References
T. Schrevelius, Harlemias, Haarlem 1648, p. 382; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 123; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, p. 224; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, II, Leipzig/Vienna 1910, p. 783; Lilienfeld in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXIV, Leipzig 1940, p. 302; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, pp. 13-20; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, pp. 421, 1034, 1036, 1041; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 323-24; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Portretten door Johannes Verspronck in meervoud’, De Nederlandsche Leeuw 125 (2008), cols. 153-55; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 9-11
Entry
The 83-year-old man in this painting by Johannes Verspronck went nameless until 1979, when provenance research and the age given on the panel enabled him to be identified as Johan Gerritsz van Schoterbosch.5 He was a civic magistrate of Haarlem in 1615-16 and a councillor from 1614 to 1618, when he was dismissed by Prince Maurits because of his Remonstrant beliefs. He was also a captain in the calivermen’s civil guard for several years, a governor of the city’s Holy Spirit Orphanage, and president of the Guild of St Hubert.6 In 1630 he presented the latter’s directors with a costly silver drinking-horn designed by Salomon de Bray.7 Two children from Van Schoterbosch’s marriage to Weyntje Pietersdr Kies, the daughter of the Haarlem burgomaster Pieter Jansz Kies, were Brechtje and Maria Overrijn van Schoterbosch, whose portraits are also in the Rijksmuseum.8
Van Schoterbosch had a long-standing relationship with the Verspronck family. He is included in a banquet of the officers of the calivermen’s civic guard, painted in 1618 by Johannes’s father, Cornelis Engelsz.9 Shortly afterwards, in 1619 and 1620, Van Schoterbosch ordered a separate portrait of himself as well as several others of members of his family from Engelsz.10 He is a man with greying hair in his late 50s in the 1620 painting,11 but here he is depicted as a dignified elderly gentleman with completely white hair. The style and composition are closely related to the Portrait of Pieter Jacobsz Schout that Verspronck completed six years earlier.12
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, pp. 48, 104, no. 66; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, p. 31
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 180, no. 1544 (as Portrait of a Man); 1903, p. 283, no. 2537 (as Portrait of a Man); 1934, p. 300, no. 2537 (as Portrait of a Man); 1976, p. 575, no. A 1253 (as Portrait of an Old Man); 1992, p. 90, no. A 1253
Citation
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of Johan Gerritsz van Schoterbosch (c. 1564-1654), 1647', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6435
(accessed 22 November 2024 12:16:17).