Portrait of a Senior Merchant of the Dutch East India Company in Batavia

c. 1650 - c. 1655

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 137.3 cm × width 206.5 cm × thickness 4.2 cm (support incl. protective backboard)
outer size: depth 5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

inscription, background centre, on the city wall: BAtavia Civitas

Technical notes

Support The canvas has been lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is clearly visible at the top and on the right.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the current edges of the support. The first, light grey layer consists of fine white and tiny black pigment particles and very few minuscule earth particles, and is remarkably medium-rich at the top. The second ground is a warm beige to orange and contains white pigment particles varying in size, some orange, yellow and brown pigment particles, and some charcoal black particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. A first lay-in was done in translucent brown paint. The composition was then worked up from the back to the front, using reserves for the figures, the parasol and the tree. The ships were added over the background. The leaves, branches and oranges extend over the sky and seem to have been executed in two phases: first the light blueish-green foliage and the oranges, followed by, partly overlapping, more oranges and branches and leaves in a darker, more brownish green. The dense foliage and the figures were applied wet in wet in opaque paints. Infrared reflectography revealed remnants of two putti in the upper right corner of the sky strewing flowers over the ships from a basket. Cross-sections show that the putti, basket and flowers were applied on top of the first layer of the sky and were at some point partly removed and in other areas overpainted.
Willem de Ridder, Anna Krekeler, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: W. de Ridder, RMA, nos. SK-A-2350/1-2, 21 September 2010
technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 21 September 2010
paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-2350/3-4, 10 March 2017
infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 17 March 2017

Condition

Fair. The paint surface is abraded throughout. The plants at lower right have a greyish discolouration, the darker leaves of the orange tree are turning a brownish grey.

Conservation

H. Plagge, 1966: canvas lined
G. Boevé-Jones, 2017: complete restoration
M. Hinoue, 2017: complete restoration

Provenance

…; ? on loan to the museum from Mr Verbeek, 1808;¹…; purchased in Rotterdam by the dealer C.J. Nieuwenhuis (1799-1883), Amsterdam and London, 1839;² from whom, £500, to John Rushout (1770-1859), 2nd Baron Northwick, Thirlestane House, Cheltenham, 1839;³ recorded at Thirlestane House, 1854-55;⁴ sale, John Rushout, sold on the premises (Phillips), 26 July 1859 sqq., no. 1590, £920, to the dealer Agnew;⁵…; sale, John Hargreaves (†, Accrington and Whalley Abbey, Lancashire, and Hall Barn Park, Buckinghamshire), London (Christie’s), 5 June 1873 sqq., no. 184, £231, to the dealer Agnew;⁶…; collection Kirkman Daniel Hodgson (1814-1879), Ashgrove, Sevenoaks, Kent;⁷ his son, Robert Kirkman Hodgson (1850-1924), Gavelacre, Hampshire; his sale, London (Christie’s), 23 February 1907, no. 64, £945, to the dealer Dowdeswell;⁸…; the dealer Frederik Muller, Amsterdam, 1907; from whom, fl. 18,000, to the museum, with the support of E. Deen, The Hague, January 1908⁹

Object number: SK-A-2350

The artist

Aelbert Cuyp (Dordrecht 1620 - Dordrecht 1691)

Aelbert Cuyp was baptized in the Reformed Augustijnenkerk in Dordrecht in October 1620 and was a scion of an artistic family. His grandfather Gerrit Gerritsz was a glass painter from Limburg who settled in Dordrecht before 1585, and his father Jacob Gerritsz was one of the city’s leading portraitists in the first half of the seventeenth century. The latter trained his own half-brother Benjamin and probably taught Aelbert as well.

Aelbert Cuyp could turn his hand to pretty well every genre – cityscapes, landscapes and, to a lesser extent, biblical and mythological subjects and portraits. His earliest independent landscapes date from 1639,¹⁰ but there are pictures of 1641 and 1645 on which he collaborated with his father.¹¹ Aelbert took care of the scenery and Jacob did the portraits in them. Drawn sights of The Hague, Utrecht, Amersfoort and Rhenen show that he went on one or more trips through the provinces of Holland, Utrecht and Gelderland, and one of those works was used for another painting that he made with his father in 1641.¹²

Aelbert Cuyp’s landscapes from the early 1640s, only a few of which bear the year of execution, are clearly influenced by Jan van Goyen. Around 1645 he began taking an interest in the Dutch Italianate painters, chiefly Jan Both, who had returned from Italy in 1642. Initially this led to his creation of imaginary Arcadian spaces drenched in a southern light, but after about 1650 his depictions of Dutch city and countryside also took on the golden brown glow of the Italian evening sun, in contrast to a cool sky. There is some uncertainty about the precise evolution of these works, because none of them are dated after 1645 – unlike a few portraits that Cuyp made in the 1650s, the last of them in 1655.¹³

Around 1651-52 Cuyp went on a journey to Nijmegen and from there to Elten and Cleves in Germany. The record of this can be seen in a whole series of sketches and paintings of the region. In the 1650s Cuyp was commissioned by a number of leading families in Dordrecht, and in 1658 he himself became a member of the elite through his marriage to Cornelia Boschman, the widow of one of the regents. Although her wills of 1659, 1664 and 1679 mention works that could have been made after that date, it seems that Cuyp abandoned art when he married. Houbraken says that he taught Barent van Calraat in the 1660s and modernized an earlier picture of his in that period,¹⁴ but there are no paintings that must have been executed after the 1650s. Cuyp now began serving in a variety of administrative and ecclesiastical posts. In 1659 he was elected deacon of the Reformed Church, a function that he also carried out from 1667 to 1672, when he was appointed an elder. In 1673, 1675 and 1676 he was a governor of the Plague House, and from 1680 to 1682 a member of the High Court of Justice of South Holland. In 1689, two years before his death, Cuyp was taxed 210 guilders, which meant that he had a considerable fortune of 42,000 guilders.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

References
M. Balen, Beschryvinge der stad Dordrecht […], Dordrecht 1677, pp. 186, 909; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 248-49; R. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, I, Haarlem 1816, pp. 381-85; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, VI, Amsterdam 1864, pp. 308-10; G.H. Veth, ‘Over de Cuyps en Bol’, De Nederlandsche Spectator 29 (1884), pp. 117-18; G.H. Veth, ‘Aelbert Cuyp, Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp en Benjamin Cuyp’, Oud Holland 2 (1884), pp. 233-90, esp. pp. 256-90 (documents); G.H. Veth, ‘Aanteekeningen omtrent eenige Dordrechtsche schilders, XIV: Aelbert Cuyp’, Oud Holland 6 (1888), pp. 142-48; Lilienfeld in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, VIII, Leipzig 1913, pp. 227-30; A. Chong, Aelbert Cuyp and the Meaning of Landscape, diss. New York University 1992, pp. 548-67 (documents); Seelig in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXIII, Munich/Leipzig 1999, p. 235

Entry

A Dutch couple accompanied by a native Indonesian holding a pajong above their heads are standing under an orange tree by the roads of Batavia (present-day Jakarta). The man is pointing his cane at the fleet about to set sail for Europe, and in the background is the city itself. This painting was probably already in the Nationale Konst-Gallery in 1808,¹⁵ but it then disappeared to England. It was thought to be a depiction of Jan Pietersz Coen, who founded Batavia and served two terms as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies between 1618 and 1629.¹⁶ It was later renamed as a portrait of Pieter Both, the first to hold this post.¹⁷ Both identifications are wrong, but it is not entirely clear who these people actually are.

There are several ships in the roads with their names written on the stern. On the far left are the Salamander and the Rotterdam, and in the right foreground are the Prins Hendrik, Banda and Sûtveen (Zutphen). With the exception of the Rotterdam all these vessels (together with the Leeuwarden and Middelburg) belonged to the fleet that sailed from Batavia on 1 December 1640.¹⁸ This led Hofstede de Groot to conclude that the man is Commander Barent Pietersz Grootenbroek of Hoorn,¹⁹ accompanied by his wife, Aeltjen Jans of Bremen, a widow whom he married in Batavia in April 1634.²⁰ However, that proposition is problematic, because Grootenbroek died on the return voyage. It has been suggested that it could be a posthumous portrait, but in 1955 Van Luttervelt came up with another idea that has not been contested, and that is that Grootenbroek’s successor Jacob Mathieusen is shown here.²¹ However, this identification also raises questions. Mathieusen only took over command of the fleet after the Cape of Good Hope, so his presentation here as the ranking officer in Batavia would have been decidedly arrogant and premature. And why, come to that, is he depicted with his wife?²²

The view of Batavia is related to the one in an engraving of 1652 after a design from the studio of Johannes Vingboons.²³ It can be assumed that the artist of the Rijksmuseum painting worked from this or a similar print. The figures’ attire is typically Dutch and dates from around 1650, in other words almost a decade after the fleet set sail for home.²⁴ This is indicated by the square toes of the man’s shoes, his hat and small collar, and the widow’s peak cap, neckerchief and bodice. Their accessories lend an exotic touch to the costume: his rattan cane, the ropes of pearls around her neck, wrists and even the bun of her hair, the feather fan and the amber pendant hanging from her belt. Their native escort carrying the pajong and wearing Dutch dress was a customary sign of status in Batavia. It was probably a fairly widespread practice, despite the authorities’ efforts to restrict it to the governing elite.²⁵

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, IX, London 1842, p. 664, no. 49 (as Aelbert Cuyp); G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated MSS., &c. &c.,, III, London 1854, p. 208 (as Aelbert Cuyp); C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, pp. 31-32, no. 81 (as Aelbert Cuyp, Porträt des Herrn Barent Pietersz, gen. Grootebroeck und seiner Frau); F. de Haan, Oud Batavia: Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen naar aanleiding van het driehonderdjarig bestaan der stad in 1919, I , Batavia 1922, no. L4 (as Aelbert Cuyp); A. Chong, Aelbert Cuyp and the Meaning of Landscape, diss. New York University 1992, pp. 487-88, no. C118 (as not by Aelbert Cuyp, A Couple near a Harbor); K. Zandvliet (ed.), The Dutch Encounter with Asia 1600-1950, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2002-03, pp. 181-83 (as Aelbert Cuyp)

Collection catalogues

1934, p. 77, no. 746a (as Aelbert Cuyp); 1960, p. 80, no. 748 A1 (as Aelbert Cuyp); 1976, p. 184, no. A 2350 (as Aelbert Cuyp)

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'circle of Aelbert Cuyp, Portrait of a Senior Merchant of the Dutch East India Company in Batavia, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7728

(accessed 10 November 2024 00:29:05).