Object data
oil on panel
support: height 76 cm × width 60.6 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. frame)
Pieter Dubordieu
Portrait of a Woman, possibly Helena le Maire (1602 ?-after 1657)
1638
Inscriptions
- signature and date, upper left (P and D ligated): PDubordieu . f / Aº1638
- label, on the reverse: Anna Broers / geboore te Antwerpe / 18 Maart 1584 / obiit 30 mey 1642 / getrouwt met Frank van der Does / grootvader en moeder van de schilder / Bakhuijse zijn vrouw (Anna Broers, born in Antwerp 18 March 1584, died 30 May 1642, married Frank van der Does, the grandfather and [grand]mother of the painter Bakhuizen’s wife)
- label: Nº 2 / Anna Broers / huisvrouw / van Frank v.d. Does / geb. 18 Maart 1584 (No. 2 Anna Broers, wife of Frank van der Does, born 18 March 1584)
Technical notes
Support The panel consists of three vertically grained oak planks (approx. 19.1, 21 and 20.5 cm), approx. 0.3-1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1619. The panel could have been ready for use by 1630, but a date in or after 1636 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the edges of the support. The first layer is a solid, off-white, chalk-like mass. The second, slightly warmer off-white ground is much thinner and consists of what appears to be lead white, a few fine black and some reddish and orange pigment particles. The ground seems identical to the one found on the pendant (SK-A-2182).
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in a dry medium, consisting of broad and sketchy lines in the hand, cursorily indicating its contours and the form of the fingers and the nails. The underdrawing is more obvious than in the pendant (SK-A-2182).
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. Infrared photography revealed a very vivid and confident initial lay-in executed with thin, medium-rich paint, often pushed with the top of the brush, indicating light and dark areas and introducing most of the tonal values. The composition was built up mainly wet in wet from the back to the front and using reserves, that were entirely filled in, except in the hair and the lace of the cap. A single and final layer was applied in a quite straightforward manner, though less so than in the undermodelling phase, and mostly opaquely, especially the whites and flesh tones. These are also the only areas with pronounced brushmarking. Darker areas, such as the background and the hair, are more transparent and leave parts of the dark undermodelling exposed, for example at the contour of the sitter’s right arm, which was somewhat broader at first. No major changes were made to the composition, however, compared to those in the pendant (SK-A-2182). To the left of the face fine lines were scratched in the wet paint defining individual hairs. Finally other details were added, such as the ring and the floral ornaments on the brocade dress, which consist of coarsely applied dots and lines. The lace was executed carefully and its pattern was partly indicated by scratching into the wet white paint, laying bare the black layer underneath, and partly by placing black dots on top of the white paint.
Willem de Ridder, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA
- technical report: M. van de Laar / W. de Ridder, RMA, 5 November 1997
- infrared photography: W. de Ridder, RMA, 1 July 2009
- paint samples: W. de Ridder, RMA, nos. SK-A-2183/1-2, 1 July 2009
- technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 1 July 2009
Condition
Fair. There is an old nail hole in the panel, now filled and retouched, close to the top at approx. 30 cm in from the left edge, also found in the pendant (SK-A-2182), maybe related to a hanging or framing system. There are two long, old scratches on the sitter’s left cheek. The paint layer is slightly abraded and has several losses throughout, some covered by discoloured retouchings. The black dress has a whitish haze. Some glassy particles and crater-like holes are found throughout, but less so than in the pendant.
Provenance
? Commissioned by or for the sitter; ? her son, Romein de Hooghe (1638-1710), Amsterdam; ? his widow, Susanna van Cracouw, or Crackouw (1651-1720);1 by whom bequeathed to her late husband’s second cousin, Johannes Bakhuizen (1683-1731), Amsterdam, with other paintings, 1713;2 ? his son, Ludolf Bakhuizen (1717-1782), Amsterdam/Rotterdam; ? his daughter, Christina Sebilla Charlotte van den Brink (1750-1810), Amsterdam; ? her son, Hendrik Arend van den Brink (1783-1852), Amsterdam; ? his son, Dirk Jacobus van den Brink (1821-1881), Velp; his sister, Maria Elisabeth van den Brink (1824-1905), Velp; by whom bequeathed to the museum, with 295 other objects, including 29 paintings, mostly family portraits, 19053
Object number: SK-A-2183
Credit line: M.E. van den Brink Bequest, Velp
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Pieter Dubordieu (Lille-Bouchard c. 1608/09 - ? in or after 1678)
In 1664 Pieter Dubordieu stated that he was 55 years old, so it is assumed that he was born in 1608 or 1609. He is first documented on his enrolment at Leiden University on 5 September 1628, when he said that he came from Lille-Bouchard (Touraine). By then he had probably completed his training as an artist, because his earliest known dated work, a portrait of an unidentified man, is from 1629.4 On 18 December 1633 he became betrothed in Leiden to Marie Lefebvre, who hailed from Rouen.
Dubordieu became a citizen of Amsterdam in 1636. Some time later he must have been back in Leiden, for in 1639 he cited his poor health as the reason for refusing to serve in the civic guard. Five years later he helped set up the Guild of St Luke in the city, which was officially inaugurated in 1648. He cancelled his membership in 1651, saying that he had stopped painting. He now tried other ways of earning a living. In 1646 he had been given permission to auction pictures by ‘various excellent masters’ that he had collected. In addition, in 1640 he had acquired an interest in a cochineal dye-works and hosiery factory in Amsterdam, but he relinquished that a year later in order to start a similar business in Leiden with someone called David de Potter. In 1661 he had to transfer his stake in it to his creditors. This would have had something to do with the fact that his house burned to the ground in 1656, destroying all his possessions. Dubordieu rejoined the Leiden guild in 1665 and paid his annual dues until 1676, when its register mentions that he would leave the city. He is nevertheless recorded there for the last time on 23 June 1678. It is not known where or when he died and was buried.
Dubordieu must have been a difficult character. In 1650 he attacked a carpenter because he did not agree with the wages the man was charging. In 1670 he had a furious argument with his son Daniel and his family, with whom he was lodging at the time. He was apparently occupying more rooms than had been agreed upon and had used ‘many blasphemous words’. The quarrel was never patched up, for more than a year later it was declared that Pieter Dubordieu had removed all his belongings from the house.
Dubordieu’s oeuvre mainly consists of portraits. His few histories are only known from written sources. He had quite a large clientele, including several Leiden professors. In 1650 he was commissioned by the city authorities to paint the likeness of Prince Willem II for the residence in The Hague. That picture, which later hung in Leiden’s town hall and was lost in the fire of 1929, is also Dubordieu’s last documented one. His portraits appear to have been influenced first by Jan Antonisz van Ravesteyn and then by Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck, and are variable in quality. His output peaked in the 1630s.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
References
R. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, I, Haarlem 1816, p. 206; W.I.C. Rammelman Elsevier, ‘Pieter du Bordieu, schilder’, De Navorscher 20 (1870), pp. 355-57; 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. 178, 180, 198; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, p. 431; Bredius in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, X, Leipzig 1914, p. 1; P.C. Sutton, Northern European Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the Sixteenth through the Nineteenth Century, coll. cat. Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1990, p. 70; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Leidse burgers in beeld: Portrettisten in Leiden van de late zestiende tot de vroege achttiende eeuw’, in T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, C.W. Fock and A.J. van Dissel (eds.), Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, VIa, Leiden 1992, pp. 3-39, esp. pp. 16-17; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, p. 321; Römer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXX, Munich/Leipzig 2001, p. 78; Bredius notes, RKD
Entry
This portrait of a woman by Pieter Dubordieu and its pendant of a man (SK-A-2182; also fig. a) entered the Rijksmuseum through the 1905 bequest of Maria Elisabeth van den Brink.5 According to the handwritten labels on the backs of both works, which were probably added in the eighteenth century, the sitters are Anna Broers (1584-1642) and Frank van der Does (1569-?).6 The museum dismissed these identifications almost immediately because the couple would have been considerably older in 1638, the year these paintings were made.7
The dates, poses and placement of the figures show that both fairly uncomplicated portraits were definitely made as a pair. The present likeness is of a slightly higher standard as regards the rendering of the clothing and the depiction of the face. The woman is wearing a shallow but very wide ruff, which was the fashion of the day. The man’s collar and cuff are sober. The light passages in them and his face are broadly brushed, while the treatment of the corresponding parts here is much more subtle. Although dendrochronology has determined that the panels come from two different trees, both pictures have the same year of execution, which removes any shred of doubt that they were conceived as pendants.8
Wuestman suggested that the sitters might be Helena le Maire (1602 ?-after 1657) and Paulus de Hooghe, or Hooge (1611-1674), for there are two wills from the first quarter of the eighteenth century that mention ‘two portraits of the same uncle Paulus de Hooge and his wife’ that were bequeathed in 1713 by Susanna van Cracouw, or Crackouw (1651-1720), to her late husband’s second cousin Johannes Bakhuizen, from whom the Rijksmuseum’s legator was directly descended.9 This identification seems plausible, partly because the couple married in Amsterdam one year before these companion pieces were completed. Dubordieu was still living in Amsterdam in 1637, so he probably then received the commission. An added argument that the portraits mentioned in the wills really are these pendants is that there are no other known likenesses of Helena le Maire.10 Paulus de Hooghe – a button-maker by trade – would have to be 26 or 27 in Dubordieu’s painting, but looks older, possibly because his face has been quite heavily retouched by the artist.
The Rijksmuseum’s collection includes another portrait by Dubordieu, which he painted a year earlier.11 All three are clear evidence of the variable quality of his work.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
B.W.F. van Riemsdijk, ‘Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond 7 (1906), pp. 174-78, esp. p. 178; G. Wuestman, ‘Een portret van Jan Six van Chandelier?’, Maandblad Amstelodamum 98 (2011), pp. 147-54, esp. p. 154, note 18
Collection catalogues
1907, p. 359, no. 818d; 1934, p. 87, no. 818d; 1976, p. 202, no. A 2183
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Pieter Dubordieu, Portrait of a Woman, possibly Helena le Maire (1602 ?-after 1657), 1638', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8336
(accessed 10 November 2024 17:50:17).