Object data
oil on panel
support: height 110.2 cm × width 87.3 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. frame)
Jacques Waben (attributed to)
Portrait of Grietje Adriaensdr Grootes (1588-1624)
Northern Netherlands, 1622
Inscriptions
- inscription and date, upper left: Ætatis 34 / 1622
- coat of arms, top right corner: a double rose on a white field in a red annulet studded with four red fleurs-de-lis and surmounted by a fictive crown
Technical notes
The support consists of three vertically grained oak panels and is bevelled on all sides except the right. The ground is yellowish in colour. Except for the figure’s face and hands, there is little brushmarking.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 20 May 2003
Condition
Fair. The joins are open but stable. The background and possibly the figure’s face have been overpainted. The coat of arms is painted on top of the overpainted background, but the inscription is original although reinforced. The varnish is moderately discoloured.
Conservation
- conservator unknown, 1887: restored
Provenance
? Commissioned by or for the sitter and her husband Jacob Symonsz Coninck (1581-1648); ? their daughter, Grietje Coninck (c. 1624-57); ? her daughter, Margaretha Hooghtwoud (1648-84); her sister, Dieuwertje Hooghtwoud; her estate inventory, 6 November 1708 (‘contrefeytsels van Jacob Symonsz koninck en sijn vrouw met swarte lysten’);1 ? her nephew, the son of Margaretha Hooghtwoud, Reijnier Hinlopen (1684-?); ? his daughter, Margaretha Hinlopen (1710-84); ? her son, Pieter Opperdoes (1735-1803); ? his daughter, Margaretha Christina Opperdoes (1780-1844), Hoorn and Beemster; her son, Dirk Margarethus Alewijn (1816-86), Hoorn and Medemblik;2 his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 16 December 1885, no. 56, as school of Paul Moreelse, fl. 150, to R.W.P. de Vries, for the museum
Object number: SK-A-1316
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jacques Waben (? Alkmaar c. 1580/90 - Hoorn 1640)
In the registration of his 1617 wedding in Hoorn with Marija Evertsdr, a widow from Amsterdam, Jacques Waben is recorded as hailing from Alkmaar. The first mention of him in Hoorn is from 2 November 1610, on which date his son Gerret was christened. Waben was referred to on this occasion as ‘captain’ and his profession was recorded as painter. A number of documents from the 1630s also refer to him as ‘captain’. In 1632, for example, he was appointed captain of 130 waardgelders, mercenary soldiers in the pay of the town government.3 In 1637, he was again appointed captain of a company of waardgelders that was dispatched to Den Briel.4 His 1617 wedding with Marija Evertsdr in Hoorn was apparently his second, as the artist already had children before this date. He married for a third time in 1621, and again in 1633. Waben must have died in 1640; on 22 April of that year he was summoned before the court in Hoorn for 76 guilders in overdue rent,5 while in a document dated 9 October of the same year he is said to be dead.6
Nothing is known about Waben’s training as an artist. His first signed and dated painting is a 1611 Portrait of Jacob Dircksz van Foreest.7 Waben was a history painter as well as a portraitist. According to Houbraken, the artist Johannes van Bronchorst owned a ‘history of Jephtha’ by Waben that was dated 1602. This painting might be identical with Waben’s Jephthah’s Daughter Welcoming her Father Home from the Battlefield formerly in the Westfries Museum, Hoorn, which is actually dated 1625.8 Houbraken also reports ‘a history of Joseph in four pieces’, executed by Waben for the Almshouse in Hoorn.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Houbraken II, 1719, p. 11; NNBW X, 1937, p. 1147; De Vries in coll. cat. Alkmaar 1997, pp. 192-93, no. 71; RKD, Bredius notes; unpublished archival research by John Brozius, 2004
Entry
Grietje Adriaensdr Grootes was a daughter of Adriaen Jacobsz Grootes, a burgomaster of Schagen. On 6 May 1612, she married Jacob Symonsz Coninck (1581-1648) in Hoorn, becoming his second wife. Coninck was a wine merchant and served numerous times as civic magistrate, councillor and burgomaster in Hoorn. He was also a regent of the Orphan Chamber and dike-reeve of Drechterland.9 Grietje Grootes died at the beginning of 1624, probably while giving birth to her daughter Grietje. She was buried in the Grote Kerk in Hoorn on 16 January 1624.10
Unremarked in the literature until now, the pendant to the present three-quarter length portrait showing Jacob Coninck is part of the collection of the Westfries Museum, Hoorn (fig. a). The pair became separated when the couple’s descendant Dirk Margarethus Alewijn (1816-86) donated the Portrait of Jacob Symonsz Coninck to the museum in Hoorn. The Portrait of Grietje Adriaensdr Grootes was not donated, but sold at Alewijn’s auction in 1885, where it was purchased by the Rijksmuseum.11
The attribution to Jacques Waben of the Portrait of Jacob Symonsz Coninck, first made in the 1924 catalogue of the museum in Hoorn, is undoubtedly correct for both that painting and its pendant.12 Typical for Waben’s portrait style are the rather stiff and awkward poses, and the unrefined modelling of the sitters’ hands and faces.13
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. 338.
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 20, no. 215 (as Anonymous); 1976, p. 658, no. A 1316 (as Northern Netherlands School); 2007, no. 338
Citation
J. Bikker, 2007, 'attributed to Jacques Waben, Portrait of Grietje Adriaensdr Grootes (1588-1624), 1622', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4769
(accessed 20 September 2024 23:39:21).