Portrait of a 27-Year-Old Woman

1663

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 104.6 cm × width 85.3 cm
outer size: depth 5.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-4243)

Inscriptions

signature, date and inscription, lower left, on the balustrade: AETA. 27.Ao. 1663 / H. van. Vliet. 8/28

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is present on all sides.
Preparatory layers The single, grey ground extends up to the current edges of the canvas. It contains what appears to be lead white, as well as black and umber-coloured pigment.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The composition was built up from the back to the front, leaving a reserve for the sitter, at the edges of which the ground has remained visible here and there. The paint was applied with smooth, visible brushstrokes blended wet in wet, with details added on top of the dried paint. The voids in the lace of the wide collar were created by pushing the back of the brush in the wet paint, revealing the ground, which serves as a mid-tone. Impasted highlights create the illusion of three-dimensionality and add liveliness to the different materials. The contour of the head was slightly lowered, as is visible to the naked eye, and that of her left sleeve was narrowed at the upper arm. X-radiography revealed that the hands were originally folded over the stomach and that the collar was at first narrower at the sitter’s neck on the left.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, nos. SK-A-1343/1-2, 4 August 2008
technical report: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 4 August 2008
X-radiography: J. van der Brugge-Mulder, RMA, nos. SK-A-1343/A1-3, B1-3, C1-3, 15 August 2018

Condition

Fair. The green used for the bows and ribbons of the dress has turned brownish at the outlines. The paint is slightly abraded throughout. Old retouchings stand out as matte spots in the right background. An old, repaired tear in the upper part of the wide collar, clearly visible in the X-radiograph, is covered by an area of overpaint. The thick varnish is uneven and has yellowed. Residues of an old, darkened varnish are visible in the depths of the brushstrokes.

Conservation

H.H. Mertens, 1935: canvas lined
C.H. Jenner, 1935: canvas lined

Provenance

…; sale, Jan Hendrik Cremer (1813-1885, Arnhem and Ixelles), Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 26 October 1886, no. 97, fl. 210, to the museum¹

Object number: SK-A-1343

The artist

Hendrick van Vliet (Delft 1611/12 - Delft 1675)

It is thanks to a document of 24 April 1633 in which Hendrick Cornelisz van Vliet stated that he was 21 years old that we know that he was born in 1611 or 1612. He was a Catholic. According to the local chronicler Dirck van Bleyswijck he learned the basic principles of his craft from his nephew, the Delft portraitist Willem van Vliet, before going on to work in the studio of Michiel van Mierevelt. This connection is confirmed by the mention of his name in a list of creditors in the latter’s probate inventory. Van Vliet joined the Delft Guild of St Luke on 22 June 1632, and his earliest dated painting, Portrait of a Surgeon, is from 1635.² He was betrothed on 23 April 1639. The artist appears several times in the local archives, for instance on 7 February 1646, when he made a sworn statement at his request about his former pupil Floris de la Fée (?-1675/76), who had lodged with him the previous year but had left under a cloud after several altercations. In 1669 Van Vliet signed a contract to produce the portraits of three orphaned children of Delft. He and his wife made their wills on 7 October 1669 and 6 December 1672. Van Vliet’s last dated work is of an interior of Utrecht Cathedral of 1674.³ He died in relative poverty in 1675 and was buried in Delft’s Oude Kerk on 28 October.

Van Vliet’s earliest pictures are portraits, but around 1651 he began painting church interiors as well. Van Bleyswijck says that he also made history pieces, but only one is known today. There is also an imaginary landscape. Van Vliet’s only documented pupil is the Floris de la Fée mentioned above, by whom no work survives.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

References
D. van Bleyswijck, Beschryvinge der stadt Delft, II, Delft 1667, p. 852; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, p. 121; H. Havard, L’art et les artistes hollandais, I, Paris 1879, p. 38; A. Bredius, ‘De schilder Hendrick Cornelisz. van Vliet te Delft’, in F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], V, Rotterdam 1882-83, pp. 284-87; J. Soutendam, ‘Necrologium van Delftse kunstenaars opgemaakt uit de Begrafenisboeken in het Archief van Delft’, in ibid., VI, 1884-87, pp. 4-29, esp. p. 11; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXIV, Leipzig 1940, pp. 463-64; J.M. Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century, Princeton 1982, pp. 172-74; Jansen in J. Giltaij and G. Jansen (eds.), Perspectiven: Saenredam en de architectuurschilders van de 17e eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1991, p. 211; Liedtke in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XXXII, New York 1996, p. 673; Liedtke in W. Liedtke et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/London (The National Gallery) 2001, p. 407; B.G. Maillet et al., Intérieurs d’églises: La peinture architecturale des écoles du Nord, 1580-1720, Wijnegem 2012, pp. 414-55

Entry

This young woman posing in front of a stone balustrade is dressed very sumptuously indeed in a silver-coloured gown with a wide lace collar, lace-trimmed sleeves, strings of pearls around her neck and wrists and clusters of pearls as earrings.⁴ In her left hand she is holding a timepiece, which can be construed in this context as an allusion to the fleeting nature of earthly existence.⁵ It is not clear whether the stone ball on the balustrade also has a symbolic connotation. It has been argued that there are several cases where a sphere combined with a cube or pedestal, which occurs in several seventeenth-century likenesses, can be interpreted as a reference to constancy and peace of mind.⁶

The painting is dated to the day, as several of Van Vliet’s portraits are, such as the one of Michiel van der Dussen and his wife and children, which features ‘1640 5/25’ – the couple’s 15th wedding anniversary.⁷ It is only logical to assume that the ‘8/28’ on the Rijksmuseum picture also had a special significance for the sitter, although unfortunately all we know about her is her age.⁸ The fact that she is turned to the right makes it unlikely that there was ever a pendant, so the date most probably does not refer to the day of her marriage.

Comparison with a likeness in the Rijksmuseum that was painted 13 years earlier shows that Van Vliet moved with the times, although he was still not an innovator in the genre.⁹ The composition of the present canvas is related to the Portrait of Amalia van Solms (1602-1675) of 1650 in the Rijksmuseum, which was produced in the studio of Gerard van Honthorst.¹⁰ The motif of the balustrade with the curtain is found several times in Van Vliet’s later work.¹¹ This portrait of 1663 is more smoothly executed than his one of 1650,¹² and differs from it in its attempted elegance. The artist prepared his paintings with sketches, but as far as is known there is no such drawing for this one.¹³

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte, Doornspijk 1982, p. 60; W. Liedtke, ‘Painting in Delft from about 1600 to 1650’, in W. Liedtke et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/London (The National Gallery) 2001, pp. 43-97, esp. p. 51

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 183, no. 1574; 1903, p. 287, no. 2568; 1934, p. 304, no. 2568; 1976, p. 582, no. A 1343

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Hendrick van Vliet, Portrait of a 27-Year-Old Woman, 1663-08-28', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6463

(accessed 20 September 2024 16:58:46).