Portrait of a Woman

1650

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 81 cm × width 67 cm
outer size: depth 6 cm (support incl. incl. SK-L-3377)

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower right: H. van der Vliet 1650

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of three vertically grained oak planks (approx. 21, 32 and 14 cm), approx. 0.6 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has plane marks. Small wooden strips (approx. 0.7 cm) were added at the top and bottom at a later date.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support. It contains mostly white pigment and a few black and earth pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front. An initial, dark grey layer was covered with the dark green of the background, leaving a reserve for the sitter. The flesh tones were created from light to dark with thick, rather opaque paints. Thin, greyish paint used for the shadows of the face was applied on top. The brushwork is overall straightforward, somewhat rough, and the paints were often worked wet in wet. Slight impasto here and there suggests the fine texture of the lace of the collar and cuffs, as well as the light reflecting off the jewellery. Due to the increased transparency of the paint layer, changes made to the position of the sitter’s left earring, the hands and to the contour of the chin have become visible to the naked eye.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, nos. SK-A-2531/1-2, 28 July 2008
technical report: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 28 July 2008

Condition

Poor. The panel has a concave warp, the left and middle planks are out of plane and the right one has a crack at lower left. The paint layer is slightly raised along the grain of the wood and abraded throughout. Small paint losses are apparent overall. Small crater-like holes, possibly due to the migration of metal soaps, are visible everywhere, especially in the face. The retouchings are discoloured, particularly along the joins. The tinted varnish, containing black and brownish-red pigment particles, has yellowed and saturates poorly.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1919: varnish mechanically removed; revarnished

Provenance

…; from the dealers Mason & Philips, London, £65 (fl. 787.15), to the museum, August 1911

Object number: SK-A-2531

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Hendrick van Vliet (Delft 1611/12 - Delft 1675)

It is thanks to a document of 24 April 1633 in which Hendrick Cornelisz van Vliet stated that he was 21 years old that we know that he was born in 1611 or 1612. He was a Catholic. According to the local chronicler Dirck van Bleyswijck he learned the basic principles of his craft from his nephew, the Delft portraitist Willem van Vliet, before going on to work in the studio of Michiel van Mierevelt. This connection is confirmed by the mention of his name in a list of creditors in the latter’s probate inventory. Van Vliet joined the Delft Guild of St Luke on 22 June 1632, and his earliest dated painting, Portrait of a Surgeon, is from 1635.¹ He was betrothed on 23 April 1639. The artist appears several times in the local archives, for instance on 7 February 1646, when he made a sworn statement at his request about his former pupil Floris de la Fée (?-1675/76), who had lodged with him the previous year but had left under a cloud after several altercations. In 1669 Van Vliet signed a contract to produce the portraits of three orphaned children of Delft. He and his wife made their wills on 7 October 1669 and 6 December 1672. Van Vliet’s last dated work is of an interior of Utrecht Cathedral of 1674.² He died in relative poverty in 1675 and was buried in Delft’s Oude Kerk on 28 October.

Van Vliet’s earliest pictures are portraits, but around 1651 he began painting church interiors as well. Van Bleyswijck says that he also made history pieces, but only one is known today. There is also an imaginary landscape. Van Vliet’s only documented pupil is the Floris de la Fée mentioned above, by whom no work survives.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

References
D. van Bleyswijck, Beschryvinge der stadt Delft, II, Delft 1667, p. 852; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, p. 121; H. Havard, L’art et les artistes hollandais, I, Paris 1879, p. 38; A. Bredius, ‘De schilder Hendrick Cornelisz. van Vliet te Delft’, in 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. 284-87; J. Soutendam, ‘Necrologium van Delftse kunstenaars opgemaakt uit de Begrafenisboeken in het Archief van Delft’, in ibid., VI, 1884-87, pp. 4-29, esp. p. 11; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXIV, Leipzig 1940, pp. 463-64; J.M. Montias, Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century, Princeton 1982, pp. 172-74; Jansen in J. Giltaij and G. Jansen (eds.), Perspectiven: Saenredam en de architectuurschilders van de 17e eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1991, p. 211; Liedtke in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XXXII, New York 1996, p. 673; Liedtke in W. Liedtke et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/London (The National Gallery) 2001, p. 407; B.G. Maillet et al., Intérieurs d’églises: La peinture architecturale des écoles du Nord, 1580-1720, Wijnegem 2012, pp. 414-55

Entry

Until the middle of the century Hendrick van Vliet worked primarily as a portraitist in a manner related to that of his teachers Willem van Vliet, a nephew of his, and Michiel van Mierevelt.³ His paintings are generally rather traditional and not very lively, as can be seen from this one of 1650.⁴

The sitter is a middle-aged woman, and since it is not known from which family the picture came and there are no other internal clues it is virtually impossible to identify her. Van Vliet was only of local importance as a portraitist, so it can be assumed that she lived in Delft. She is turned to the left and is wearing a ring that indicates that she is married, so at one time she was probably accompanied by a pendant likeness of her husband. Van Vliet has shown her against an undifferentiated background, holding a pair of gloves. He took great care over the transparent linen of her collar, and scratched the pattern of the lace border into the paint with a sharp object, probably the handle of the brush, a method he also used in a 1663 portrait of a younger woman in the Rijksmuseum.⁵

The picture is signed ‘H. van der Vliet’ in a variant of his name that he often used in his works up to around 1650.⁶ No preliminary study is known. A small sketchbook of the artist preserved in Rotterdam is largely filled with studies for portraits, but is of a slightly later date.⁷

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

W. Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte, Doornspijk 1982, p. 59; W. Liedtke, ‘Painting in Delft from about 1600 to 1650’, in W. Liedtke et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/London (The National Gallery) 2001, pp. 43-97, esp. p. 51

Collection catalogues

1912, p. 396, no. 2566a; 1976, p. 582, no. A 2531

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Hendrick van Vliet, Portrait of a Woman, 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7838

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