Object data
oil on silver
support: height 14 cm × width 10.5 cm
outer size: height 29.3 cm (support incl. frame) × width 26 cm (support incl. frame) × depth 2.9 cm (support incl. frame)
Dirk Druyf
Portrait of a Man
1659
Inscriptions
- signature and date, centre right: D: druijf fe. / 1.6.5.9.
Technical notes
Support The oval silver plate is approx. 0.1 cm thick. The reverse is covered with a dark, paint-like material.
Preparatory layers Stereomicroscopy seemed to reveal a layer of gold leaf on top of the silver plate, and a few minute gold-coloured particles were found in cross-sections. On top a thin, smooth, whitish ground was applied which extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of what appear to be coarse lead white 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. Reserves were used for the figure and, in the black costume, for the gloved hand and lower part of the collar. The paint was applied thinly, in a straightforward manner, wet in wet throughout and in just one layer. The face was finely worked up whereas other areas, especially the glove, are more schematically executed. Several long, dark strands of hair were created with loose stokes of the brush. The paint surface is smooth throughout due to the use of thin and quite liquid paint. Some touches were added to the eyes in the final stage.
Willem de Ridder, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: W. de Ridder, RMA (no image available), 2009
- paint samples: W. de Ridder, RMA, nos. SK-A-2786/1-2, 1 July 2009
- technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 1 July 2009
Condition
Fair. The support has minor deformations overall. The paint is cupped, especially in the face and the collar, and very fragile. There are small losses throughout, especially along the edges, as well as numerous dark spots in the face. The hair to the right of the face has two scratches. The varnish has significantly yellowed.
Provenance
…; collection Jacob Rudolph Hendrik Neervoort van de Poll (1862-1924), Huis Beukenstein, Rijsenburg, near Utrecht, by 1903;1 by whom bequeathed to the museum, March 1916
Object number: SK-A-2786
Credit line: Gift of J.R.H. Neervoort van de Poll, Rijsenburg
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Dirk Druyf (? c. 1620 - ? Leiden in or after 1669)
On 30 August 1649 Dirk Druyf declared that he was about 28 years old, and on 8 August 1669 he followed that up with the statement that he had reached 50, so he must have been born around 1620. His place of birth, however, is not recorded. He is first documented in 1648, when he joined the Guild of St Luke in Leiden, where he registered as a paying member in 1649 and 1658-61. The last mention of him in the sources is on the above date in 1669. It is not known where or when he was buried.
Druyf’s extant oeuvre is extremely small. There are a few drawn and painted portraits and a couple of genre scenes. It is not entirely clear what one is to make of ‘a winter and a summer’ of his that are mentioned on 1 July 1651 in the probate inventory of Jean la Pla, but they were probably two landscapes. His first dated work is a drawing of 1644 with the likeness of an old woman,2 and his last one a 1666 drawn effigy of Cornelis van ’s-Gravesande now in the Rijksmuseum Print Room.3 The earliest of his paintings bearing the year of execution is Man Drinking of 1646, which was in the Stadtmuseum in Gdańsk in 1913.4 In these rare pieces Druyf comes across as a mediocre artist with no real mastery of perspective or anatomy.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
References
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, p. 207; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, p. 428; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, IX, Leipzig 1913, p. 592; Greub in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXIX, Munich/Leipzig 2001, p. 535; Bevers in H. Bevers and U. Sölter, Niederländische Zeichnungen und Druckgraphik der Sammlung Christoph Müller im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett: Kritisches Bestandsverzeichnis, coll. cat. Berlin 2008, p. 118; Bredius notes, RKD
Entry
This small portrait was applied in oils on a silver plate, and as far as we know it was the only time that Dirk Druyf used such a support. His only other likeness on metal is of a young girl that he painted on the back of an engraved copperplate.5
The bust-length figure fills much of the surface, and since he is turned to the left the picture probably had a companion piece, possibly of his wife. The unidentified sitter has put his gloved hand on his chest. Although the imperfections in perspective and anatomy that are typical of Druyf are not so glaring due to the modest size of the painting, the head does nevertheless look as if it is placed immediately on top of the torso, and the man’s bent right arm is too small. The aforementioned portrait of the girl on copper displays exactly the same shortcomings.
The picture was bequeathed to the Rijksmuseum during his lifetime by Jacob Rudolph Hendrik Neervoort van de Poll. He was an illegitimate son and heir of Jonkheer Jacobus Salomon Hendrik van de Poll, who left his entire collection of paintings to the museum in 1880. It is not known whether this portrait is of an ancestor or was acquired by the donor.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, Meisterwerke der Porträtmalerei auf der Ausstellung im Haag 1903, exh. cat. The Hague (Haagse Kunstkring) 1903, p. 7, no. 16a
Collection catalogues
1918, p. 369, no. 810a; 1934, p. 85, no. 810a; 1976, p. 200, no. A 2786
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Dirk Druyf, Portrait of a Man, 1659', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9377
(accessed 13 November 2024 03:18:23).