Object data
oil on panel
support: height 51.1 cm × width 46.6 cm
outer size: depth 5.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Paulus Moreelse
Self-Portrait
c. 1623
Technical notes
The support is a single vertically grained oak panel which is not bevelled. The top of the support was probably cut down as there is no ground or paint present on the edge here, whereas they are present on the edges of the bottom and sides of the panel. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1593. The panel could have been ready for use by 1602, but a date in or after 1612 is more likely. The ground is most probably double-layered, consisting of a grey first layer covered by a second, yellow ochre layer. The paint was applied thinly, allowing the grain of the wood to show through, and the brushmarking is vigorous in places. The face was painted wet in wet.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 5 May 2003
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 29 April 2005
Condition
Fair. The varnish is quite discoloured, making a judgement of the condition of the paint layers difficult.
Provenance
...; donated to the museum by Dr Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), The Hague, October 18871
Object number: SK-A-1423
Credit line: Gift of A. Bredius, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Paulus Moreelse (Utrecht c. 1571 - Utrecht 1638)
De Bie was the first author to give Moreelse’s year of birth; the artist’s baptismal record has not come down to us. His father, Jan Jansz Moreelse, was a cooper from Louvain. According to his 17th- and 18th-century biographers, Moreelse studied for two years with Michiel van Mierevelt, probably in Delft, and then spent a long period in Italy, where he received numerous portrait commissions in Rome. None of the paintings executed by Moreelse in Italy are known today. He returned to Utrecht by 1596, when he reportedly joined the saddlers’ guild, to which painters also belonged. In 1602 Moreelse married Antonia van Wintershoven. Because the ceremony took place in the town hall of Utrecht, Moreelse would not have been a member of the Reformed Church at this point. Later, however, he did join that congregation. His first dated painting, a Portrait of a Man is also from 1602.2 In the spring of 1611, Moreelse was elected dean of the saddlers’ guild and in September of the same year he became the first dean of the newly founded Guild of St Luke. He held this post again in 1612, 1615 and 1619. Twenty-eight pupils are recorded as having trained with Moreelse from 1611 on, more than with any other guild member. Together with Abraham Bloemaert, Moreelse was also one of the principal teachers at the drawing academy set up in Utrecht some time after the painters’ guild gained independence. Among Moreelse’s pupils were Dirck van Baburen (1594/95-1624), Pieter Portengen (c. 1612-43) and Jan ter Borch (?-1676). Two of his sons, Johan (after 1602-34) and Benjamin (before 1629-51), also became painters, and one of his daughters is reported to have assisted Moreelse with the execution of a portrait.
Moreelse was chiefly active as a portrait painter. In addition to his many portraits of Utrecht’s leading citizens, he received commissions from court circles, such as the 1621 Portrait of Sophia Hedwig, Countess of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, as Caritas, with her Children.3 Moreelse’s 1616 Officers and Other Civic Guardsmen of the IIIrd District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Jacob Gerritsz Hoyngh and Lieutenant Nanningh Florisz Cloeck (SK-C-623) is the only civic guard piece by a Utrecht painter to have survived. Moreelse also painted histories and genre pieces, and is credited with introducing the single-figure shepherdess into Dutch painting. His activities as an architect include a plan for enlarging Utrecht (executed posthumously in 1663) and the design of the Catherijnepoort (1621-25; destroyed), one of the town gates. After having supported Prince Maurits’s dismissal of Utrecht’s town council in 1618, Moreelse was given a seat on the new town council, which he occupied until his death. He also served as churchwarden of the Buurkerk, headman of the civic guard, an alderman, and chief treasurer of Utrecht. Paulus Moreelse died on 6 March 1638 and was buried in the Buurkerk.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 280v; De Bie 1661, p. 131; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 171, 178; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 49; Hoevenaar 1778, p. 9; Swillens 1926; De Jonge 1938, pp. 1-7, 139-53 (documents); Bok in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1986, pp. 322-25; Bok in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 311-12; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, p. 386; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2000; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, pp. 13-60, 203-50 (documents)
Entry
There are three extant painted self-portraits by Moreelse, none of which is dated.4 Both De Jonge and Domela Nieuwenhuis consider the earliest to be the Self-Portrait in Hannover (fig. a), in which Moreelse wears a hat and holds a round disk, most likely a mirror.5 By comparison with the Hannover Self-Portrait, the composition of the Rijksmuseum painting is much simpler; Moreelse shows only his hatless head and shoulders. Although the present painting retains the dynamic pose of the Hannover Self-Portrait, in which the artist looks over his shoulder, it has been tempered. There are no allusions to Moreelse’s vocation as an artist. Instead, the ruff and, especially, the tabbaard emphasize his position as a prominent member of the bourgeoisie.6 According to Domela Nieuwenhuis, Moreelse’s choice of clothing in this portrait might have been prompted by the artist’s desire to identify himself with the foremost Utrecht portrait painter of the 16th century, Jan van Scorel, who was portrayed wearing a tabbaard by Antonio Moro in 1559. The tabbaard, however, was not an unusual clothing item in the 17th century, making it unlikely that anyone would have noticed the comparison if, indeed, such was intended by Moreelse.
De Jonge dated Moreelse’s Rijksmuseum Self-Portrait to between 1630 and 1635.7 Domela Nieuwenhuis, though, has convincingly shown that a date around the beginning of the 1620s would be more appropriate.8 The sitter’s ‘stitched and ragged’ ruff would already have been old-fashioned by 1625,9 and while the sfumato handling evident in Moreelse’s portraits from before 1622 is missing, nor is the detailed plasticity of the faces in the portraits from 1625, such as the Portrait of a Man, possibly Reijnier Pauw (SK-C-1440) in evidence. The Rijksmuseum Self-Portrait can be best compared to the 1622 Portrait of a Man in Buenos Aires.10 The traditional identification of the present Self-Portrait as the model for an engraved portrait of Moreelse has been rightly repudiated by Domela Nieuwenhuis.11
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. 218.
Literature
De Jonge 1938, p. 99, no. 124; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, p. 103, II, p. 431, no. SAP70, with earlier literature
Collection catalogues
1897, p. 114, no. 983a; 1903, p. 183, no. 1657; 1934, p. 198, no. 1657; 1960, p. 214, no. 1657; 1976, p. 397, no. A 1423; 2007, no. 218
Citation
J. Bikker, 2007, 'Paulus Moreelse, Self-Portrait, c. 1623', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4644
(accessed 22 November 2024 22:07:03).