Object data
oil on panel
support: height 56.5 cm × width 73.4 cm × thickness 1.5 cm
outer size: depth 6.4 cm (support incl. frame)
Willem Cornelisz Duyster, anonymous
c. 1631 - c. 1650
oil on panel
support: height 56.5 cm × width 73.4 cm × thickness 1.5 cm
outer size: depth 6.4 cm (support incl. frame)
The support is a horizontally grained oak plank with bevels along the top, bottom and left edges. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1617. The panel could have been ready for use by 1631, but a date in or after 1636 is more likely. Traces of the ground on the right edge show that the dimensions of the panel have not been altered. The thin and smooth ground layer is yellowish. X-radiography revealed that the standing boy on the left, the infant on the lap of the seated woman, the little girl in the centre and the standing girl on the right are all later additions painted on top of the background. It also showed that the standing man was overpainted. He originally wore a broad-brimmed hat and a large ruff. His position was changed; his face was posed a little more to the right, and both of his hands were in front of his chest. The contours of the overpainted hat and feet are still visible with the naked eye. A photograph taken under infrared light showed that the man was initially considerably younger and slimmer. The right hand of the seated woman on the left was initially in her lap. The collars of all the figures, with the exception of the seated woman and the black man, were adjusted. For instance, the collar of the boy standing on the left was reduced in size. Examination with the stereomicroscope showed that the floor and the background were entirely overpainted. It is clear from the X-radiographs that the space was more clearly defined in the original paint layer, with the corner of the room being visible between the standing man with the black cloak and the seated woman. The tablecloth, which was originally larger and of a different shade of red, was also overpainted with an opaque red layer that hides one or two unidentifiable objects lying on the table. The original figures – the seated women and the black man – were painted smoothly with sharply defined contours. The contours in the other figures are softer. A characteristic detail in the original figures which is lacking in the additions is the highlights in the faces.
Verslype/Wuestman 2006
Fair. The paint layer is severely abraded, especially in the clothing of the seated women. There is a 16.5 cm crack in the panel at centre right. The varnish is yellow and has a prominent craquelure.
...; purchased in The Hague, fr. 150, by Théophile Thoré;1 collection Théophile Thoré, also known as W. Bürger (1807-69), Paris, as Thomas de Keyser;2 from whom, fr. 800/fl. 380, to the museum, as Thomas de Keyser, Group Portrait with Admiral Pieter Pietersz Heijn, 1866
Object number: SK-A-203
Copyright: Public domain
Willem Cornelisz Duyster (Amsterdam 1599 - Amsterdam 1635)
Willem Cornelis Duyster, the son of a carpenter, was baptized in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 30 August 1599. His surname is derived from the house ‘De Duystere Werelt’ (The dark world), in which he and his family lived from 1620 onwards. His teacher is unknown. It has been speculated that he studied with the portrait painter Cornelis van der Voort or with Barend van Someren. The suggestion that Pieter Codde was his teacher was based on the misinterpretation of a document from 1625 that reveals that Duyster and Codde had a quarrel at Meerhuysen, a country house rented by Van Someren. Duyster was also well-acquainted with the guardroom painter Simon Kick. Duyster and Kick married each other’s sisters in a double wedding on 5 September 1631, and both couples lived in ‘De Duystere Werelt’. Duyster died of the plague at the age of 35. He was buried in the Zuiderkerk on 31 January 1635.
His oeuvre consists of merry companies, guardroom scenes and portraits, close in style to those by Pieter Codde. Few of Duyster’s paintings are dated. Philips Angel praised his skill at painting fabrics in 1642.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Angel 1642, p. 55; Houbraken II, 1719, p. 145; Bredius 1888a; Playter 1972, I, pp. 1-14, 23-35; Beaujean in Saur XXXI, 2002, pp. 343-44
Technical examination in 2005 revealed that more than half of this work is overpainted.3 An X-radiograph shows that four of the eight figures – the standing boy holding the pole, the girl standing on the far right, and the two youngest children – are later additions, and that the man with the black cloak was painted on top of another figure (fig. a). The original background, floor and tablecloth are also concealed by a later paint layer. Only the two seated women and the black man are original. The added figures and the overpaintings are by another, considerably less talented artist.
The painting, which was bought as a work by Thomas de Keyser in 1866, has been hanging in the museum’s reserves for more than a century. Given the standard of the overpainting, it is not surprising that no attention was paid to suggestions that the artist should be sought in the near vicinity of Willem Duyster4 or Pieter Codde.5 The moment it became clear which parts of the composition were original and which were not, the question of the attribution proved less problematic than was feared. The painting displays all the stylistic features found in the work of Willem Duyster, and is closely related to his signed portrait of a couple in Dublin (fig. b).
The distinctive elements are the bare, empty room, the elongated, slender figures, the hard contour lines and the striking white highlights in the faces (cf. SK-C-514). The broadbrimmed hat that the man with the cloak wears in the X-rays, and a few notable details in the rendering of textures, such as the turned-up skirt of the seated woman on the left, and the curling ends of the lace cuffs, are typical of the artist. As a result of the abrasion in the garb of the seated women, there is now very little pleasure to be had from Duyster’s talent for imitating textures.
The painting can be dated to the early 1630s on the evidence of the clothing of the two seated women, Duyster’s stylistic development, insofar as it is known, and the dendrochronological findings. The X-radiographs show that the additions and modifications were made in at least two phases.6 In the first, the man was overpainted and the children added, and some time later their clothing was brought up to date. On the evidence of the clothing and the original collars of the added figures, Marieke de Winkel believes that the first intervention took place around 1645, and the second around 1650. Among the changes made in that second phase were the reduction in the size of the collars of the standing man and the boy, and the replacement of the neckerchief with hanging corners of the girl standing on the right with a collar with a horizontal lower border.7 This means that changes were made some 18 years after the portrait was painted. The person who commissioned them had no choice but to employ another artist, because Duyster had died in 1635.
One can only guess at the nature of the family’s circumstances that led to the overpainting. One possibility is that the seated woman on the right had the portrait of her second husband painted over that of her first, deceased one. However, since her clothing was not modernized, it is more likely that she herself had died and that her husband had brought the portrait of his family up to date. The X-radiograph, though, does not answer the question whether the rather stocky man with his pronounced nose is an older version of the man underneath.
Another unanswered question is which family this is. The 19th-century identification of Admiral Pieter Pietersz Heijn (1577-1629) and his family can be readily dismissed, for the naval hero died childless.8 Little credence can be given to the theory that his face was painted over that of another man in order to push up the price of the painting.9 In 1934 the man with the black cloak was identified as the Zeeland vice-admiral Joos Banckert, also known as Van Trappen (c. 1598-1647). That identification was based on a resemblance between the standing man and a portrait of Banckert in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-202). However, the composition of Banckert’s family does not match that shown in this painting.10 Nor are there any medals or other attributes that would identify the man as Banckert or some other naval hero.
The black man behind the table has always been regarded as a servant, which would make the painting an early example of the later fashion in portraiture in which the patrons were accompanied by a black slave.11 There certainly were black servants working in Amsterdam in this period, particularly for Portuguese Jews,12 but it is not certain that the man in Duyster’s family portrait was indeed a slave. In view of the self-assured position he occupies in the scene, and his costly ruff and attire, it is possible that he was a business acquaintance who was staying in the Republic to learn Dutch.13
It is possible that the central figure with his black hat and clothes was a shipowner or merchant trading on behalf of the West India Company.14 Duyster’s brother Dirck was deputy commissioner for the West India Company at Fort Orange on the Hudson river north of Nieuw Amsterdam, modern-day New York. It is known for certain that Duyster the artist had trading contacts in Fort Orange, for in an archival document discovered by Bredius he authorized Simon Kick to collect the sum of 170 guilders from a barber called Harmen Meijndersz.15
Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 65.
Hofstede de Groot 1899a, p. 168; Verslype/Wuestman 2006
1876, p. 105, no. 207 (as Thomas de Keyser, Admiral Pieter Pietersz Heijn with his Family); 1880, pp. 176-77, no. 185 (as Thomas de Keyser, Group Portrait with Admiral Pieter Pietersz Heijn); 1887, p. 91, no. 764 (as Thomas de Keyser, Group Portrait with Admiral Pieter Pietersz Heijn); 1903, p. 21, no. 225 (as Dutch School, possibly Pieter Codde, Family group); 1934, p. 18, no. 225 (as Dutch School, possibly Pieter Codde, Vice-Admiral Joos van Trappen and his Family); 1976, p. 661, no. A 203 (as Dutch School, Family Portrait, Thought To Be the Family of Joos van Trappen); 2007, no. 65
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Willem Cornelisz. Duyster and anonymous, Family Group with a Black Man, c. 1631 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4797
(accessed 10 November 2024 03:41:03).