Object data
oil on panel
support: height 68 cm × width 57.6 cm
outer size: depth 4 cm (support incl. SK-L-1999)
Jan Jansz Westerbaen (I)
Portrait of Sophia van Overmeer (1608-1684)
1650
Inscriptions
- signature and date, with monogram, upper right: Aº . 1650 / I.W.
- coat of arms, top right: divided vertically. 1: a gold star with three birds, two above and one below, on a green (originally blue) field. 2: a red eagle on a gold field
Technical notes
Support The support consists of three vertically grained oak planks (approx. 12.2, 26.3 and 19.1 cm), approx. 0.8 cm thick. The right edge has been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides, though less so on the left, and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1629. The panel could have been ready for use by 1638, but a date in or after 1648 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin beige ground extends over the edges of the support at the top and bottom and on the left, but not over the right edge. It contains white pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support at the top and bottom and on the left, but not over the right edge. The grey background was applied in just one layer, leaving a reserve for the figure. The collar was reserved in the clothes, while the cuffs were added on top. The overall appearance of the paint layer is smooth with some texture in the white lace. Slight adjustments were made to the contours of the cap and the lower edge of the collar.
Eva van Zuien, 2024
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder / L. Sozzani, RMA, 22 August 1997
- infrared photography: E. van Zuien, RMA, 31 July 2008
- paint samples: E. van Zuien, RMA, nos. SK-A-1478/1-2, 31 July 2008
- technical report: E. van Zuien, RMA, 31 July 2008
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 8 April 2011
Condition
Fair. There is an old small crack, approx. 6 cm, and a dent in the top right corner. The lower half of the coat of arms has been reinforced. There are some discoloured retouchings in the background. The varnish is uneven and has severely yellowed.
Provenance
Commissioned by or for the sitter; ? her son, Godevert van Persijn (1633-1695), The Hague; ? his son, Willem van Persijn (1655-1733), The Hague; ? his son, Govert van Persijn (1684-1756), The Hague; ? his son, Govert Johan van Persijn (1724-1809), The Hague; his nephew, Anthony Quirinus van Persijn (1767-1842), Amsterdam, with 13 other family portraits, 1801 (‘Portraiten onser voorouders in der rechte manlijke linie. Twee partijen. A […] No 3:2 Sophia van Overmeer, Echtgenoote van Adriaan Goverts-zoon van Persijn’);1 ? his daughter, Hester Constantia van Persijn (1793-1887), Utrecht, or his son, Jan van Persijn (1799-1834), Amsterdam; ? the latter’s daughter, Elisabeth Machtelina van Persijn (1828-1865), Utrecht; ? her husband, Count Constantijn Theodoor van Lynden van Sandenburg (1826-1885), Neerlangbroek;…; sale, M.M. van Galen, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 30 October 1888 sqq., no. 448, as Monogrammist J.W., 17th century, fl. 174.30, to the museum2
Object number: SK-A-1478
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan Jansz Westerbaen I (The Hague c. 1600/02 - The Hague 1686)
Since Jan Jansz Westerbaen is thought to have been the younger brother of the poet Jacob Jansz Westerbaen, who was born on 7 April 1599, and is recorded as being the pupil of Evert van der Maes in 1619, it is assumed that the place and year of his birth were The Hague between 1600 and 1602. He came from a Remonstrant family. His father Jan Jacobsz Westerbaen was active as a ropemaker. His sister Anna was the wife of the Catholic Haarlem artist Salomon de Bray. In 1624 the painter registered as a master with the Hague Guild of St Luke, and six years later he married Maria Bartelmeesdr Suijster, a widow. Their only son, who is known as Jan Jansz Westerbaen II (1631/33-in or before 1672) followed in the footsteps of his father and was the latter’s only known pupil before being apprenticed to Adriaen Hanneman.
Westerbaen regularly filled official positions within the Hague guild, serving as warden in 1642-45 and again in 1650-52. He and his son are documented as members of the Confrerie Pictura artists’ society in 1656, but since he also put himself forward as a candidate for warden of the Guild of St Luke in 1657 he was evidently a member of both for some time. He was not elected. In 1659-61 and 1663-65 Westerbaen was warden of Pictura. The tax assessment register of 1674 records that his assets were valued at 4,000 guilders. He died on 19 September 1686.
Westerbaen’s earliest known painting is a likeness of an unknown man dated 1637,3 and his last ones are the 1670 companion pieces of Jan van de Houven4 and his wife Elisabeth Cabeljau.5 Going by Westerbaen’s modest surviving oeuvre, which amounts to a little over 30 pictures, he produced portraits of only two types: busts and hip-lengths. Most of them are variously monogrammed ‘IW’, ‘IWB’ or ‘IIWB’. He worked locally, primarily for the regent class in The Hague.
Richard Harmanni, 2024
References
J. van Gool, De nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen: Waer in de levens- en kunstbedryven er tans levende en reets overleedene schilders, die van Houbraken, noch eenig ander schryver, zyn aengeteekend, verhaelt worden, II, The Hague 1751, p. 510; R. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, I, Haarlem 1816, pp. 205-06; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, III, Amsterdam 1859, p. 231; 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.], III, Rotterdam 1880-81, pp. 262, 277; ibid., IV, 1881-82, passim; ibid., V, 1882-83, passim; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, II, Leipzig/Vienna 1910, p. 854; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXV, Leipzig 1942, p. 445; A. van der Marel, ‘Westerbaen: Een Zuid-Hollands geslacht van lijndraaiers, dichters, kunstschilders en theologen’, De Nederlandsche Leeuw 79 (1962), cols. 74-93, 106-19, 148-67, esp. cols. 77-78, 80-90; ibid., 81 (1964), cols. 103-05; Ekkart in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, pp. 264-67
Entry
The arms of alliance in the top right corner of this portrait belong to the Van Persijn and Van Overmeer families. The coat of arms establishes the sitter as Sophia van Overmeer, who married Adriaen van Persijn (1610-1656) in 1632. This identification is confirmed by the digits ‘3.2’ in an eighteenth-century hand on a label on the back of the panel, which corresponds to the number given to this painting in a list of family portraits drawn up in 1801.6
Sophia van Overmeer was born into the Hague regent class as the seventh child of Wyer Gerritsz van Overmeer and Adriana van Leuningen. Her father was a wealthy brewer who served as a city councillor and alderman.7 Her husband was a ‘receiver at the finance office of the Generality Lands’, and the son of Govert van Persijn and Clementia van Dam, called Van Hoekgeest.8 Despite his official function Adriaen van Persijn is also documented as a brewer, probably as a result of his marriage. In 1648 he came into the possession of two buildings on Lange Voorhout (the present-day nos. 17-19) in The Hague, and presumably lived in one of them.9 His wife bought the house at no. 58 as a widow in 1663.10
The painting is signed ‘I.W.’ at top right, which led to it being attributed to Johannes van Wijckersloot when the museum bought it in 1888.11 Hofstede de Groot rightly associated the monogram with Jan Jansz Westerbaen in 1904, but wrongly stated that it was the son’s. He was trying to distinguish between the oeuvres of both Westerbaens by allocating the old-fashioned portraits informed by Michiel van Mierevelt to the father and the contemporary ones in the manner of Gerard van Honthorst’s workshop to the son.12 That distinction turned out to be invalid, though, because after Hofstede de Groot had published his findings portraits began to emerge from the 1640s in which there were already detectable traces of Honthorst at a time when Westerbaen II was still too young to be active as an independent master.13 In addition, given the latter’s apprenticeship to Adriaen Hanneman one would expect that influence to be more manifest. Since the archaic and the fashionable elements intermingle, Ekkart came to the conclusion that all the portraits are by the father, and that it was more plausible to assume that his son merely assisted him, since there is not a single work that can be attributed to him with any certainty.14 Hence there is no problem about giving this picture to Jan Jansz Westerbaen I, as was done in 1976.15
Quite apart from the gold headband, the pearls on the bow of the bodice and the three-stranded pearl necklace are clear marks of prosperity and dignity. As always with Westerbaen, the background is very plain. The shadow in the right background shows that Sophia van Overmeer is being illuminated from top right, which also accounts for the shaded area at the bottom left.
The painting was first put on the market in 1888 at the auction of the collection of one M.M. van Galen in Amsterdam, where at least two other portraits from the Van Persijn family were up for sale.16 Since there is no known connection between Van Galen and the Van Persijns, the former either bought these works or they were put up for sale by scions of the sitters.
The present panel probably came by descent to Elisabeth Machtelina van Persijn, to whom all the family portraits passed.17 Her husband Constantijn Theodoor van Lynden died only in 1885. Although the 1888 auction also took place soon after the death in 1887 of Elisabeth Machtelina’s aunt Hester Constantia, who was the last of the Van Persijn branch, it does not seem very likely that the paintings came from her estate, because she lived in a psychiatric institution from 1833 onwards.18
This work has a pendant in the form of a likeness of Sophia van Overmeer’s husband Adriaen van Persijn, which dates from the same year, is also monogrammed, and is now in a private collection (fig. a). It belonged to the portion of the portraits that descended via a different family line.
Richard Harmanni, 2024
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Kritische opmerkingen omtrent Oud-Hollandsche schilderijen in onze musea, IV’, Oud Holland 22 (1904), pp. 111-20, esp. p. 118; W. Bernt, The Netherlandish Painters of the Seventeenth Century, III, London 1970, no. 1364
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 306, no. 2730 (as Johannes van Wijckersloot); 1976, p. 602, no. A 1478
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2024, 'Jan Jansz. (I) Westerbaen, Portrait of Sophia van Overmeer (1608-1684), 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6546
(accessed 22 November 2024 18:07:18).