Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 113 cm × width 91.2 cm
outersize: depth 10.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-4965)
Jan Mijtens
Portrait of Jacob de Witte (1628-1679)
1660
Inscriptions
- signature and date, upper left (j, A, N and M ligated): jANMijtens. F: / a°: 1660.
Technical notes
Support The plain-weave canvas has been lined and was transferred onto a larger stretcher. All tacking edges have been preserved. The top and left edges have been partially let out to the front by approx. 0.4 cm and 1 cm respectively. Cusping is clearly visible on the left. Linear crack patterns parallel to the left and right edges, in a cross shape in the centre, and diagonally in the corners may correspond to the bars of the original strainer.
Preparatory layers The single, light, warm grey ground extends up to the tacking edges at the top and on the right, and partially over the ones at the bottom and on the left. It consists of coarse white pigment particles with an addition of earth pigments and fine black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. A first lay-in of the thin, dark areas of the composition, particularly the landscape, was made with earth colours ranging from red to brown to grey. It can also be glimpsed at the edges of reserves, for example at the contours of the sitter’s left sleeve and right shoulder. The painting was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, leaving reserves for the vista, the entire figure and the dog’s head; some were later adjusted at the contours, as can be seen, for example, in the halo surrounding the head. Red underpaint shows through the flesh tones, notably around the hands. The skin and facial features were blended wet in wet, with carefully defined transitions in brown and occasionally in black, as at the outline of the sitter’s left cheek. The clothing was constructed from a mid-tone with added highlights, and deepened with dark contours. The butt end of the brush was used to scratch details into the white lace cravat. The dog’s nose was extended after the coat had been executed.
Gwen Tauber, 2023
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 13 February 2009
- paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-A-3021/1-2, 13 February 2009
- technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 13 February 2009
Condition
Poor. There is slight abrasion in the thin dark paints, notably in the background. The dark areas show a prominent crack pattern with strong cupping. The foliage of the tree on the left and parts of the hair on the right have a grey haze.
Original framing
A frame with pendant festoon on auricular carving1
Provenance
For both the present painting (SK-A-3021) and its pendant (SK-A-3022)
? Commissioned by or for the sitters; ? their daughter, Helena Catharina de Witte (1661-1695), wife of Imam Mogge (1651-1716), with Haamstede Castle, Schouwen; ? their son, Rutschert Mogge (1682-1729), with Haamstede Castle; ? his son, Imam Mogge (1707-1737), with Haamstede Castle; ? his son, Willem Ferdinand Mogge (1731-1769), with Haamstede Castle; ? his daughter, Susanna Cornelia Mogge (1753-1806), wife of Hendrik Muilman (1743-1812, Amsterdam), with Haamstede Castle; ? their son, Willem Ferdinand Mogge Muilman (1778-1849), with Haamstede Castle; his daughter, Anna-Maria van de Poll-Mogge Muilman (1811-1878), with Haamstede Castle;2 bequeathed to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, with other family portraits, 1853;3 his widow, Dieuwke Fontein (1800-1879), Spaarnberg, Santpoort; her granddaughter, Olga E.A.E. Wüste, née Baroness von Gotsch (1848-1924), Santpoort; donated from her estate by her great-niece, Johanna Gerarda Fontein (1857-1941), to the museum, with three other paintings, 19244
Object number: SK-A-3021
Credit line: Gift of J.G. Fontein, Santpoort
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jan Mijtens (The Hague c. 1613/14 - The Hague 1670)
Jan Mijtens was born in The Hague at the end of 1613 or in January 1614 as the son of David Mijtens and Judith Hennicx. His father was a saddler and a member of the prosperous middle class. The extended family came from Flanders originally and produced numerous painters who remained active in various European countries until the eighteenth century. Jan Mijtens very probably started his apprenticeship with his uncle Isaac Mijtens and trained in all likelihood briefly with the latter’s elder brother, Daniel Mijtens, who returned to The Hague in 1635 after many years in England.
In 1639 Mijtens registered as a master painter with the Guild of St Luke in The Hague. His earliest dated pictures, two group portraits, are from 1638.5 In 1642 he married his cousin Anna, the London-born daughter of his uncle Daniel. One of the couple’s children, named Daniel as well, followed in his father’s footsteps. Other pupils of Mijtens were Julius de Geest (1638/39-1699), son of the Frisian portraitist Wybrand de Geest, Nicolaes Lissant (1639/40-after 1696), Gerard de Nijst (dates unknown), Adriaen Stalpert van der Wiele (dates unknown), Pouwels van de Velde (dates unknown), Andries Thijsz de Wit (dates unknown) and Urbanus Talibert van Yperen (c. 1630-in or after 1682). Only the first two left works that have survived.
Mijtens became one of the first members of the newly founded Confrerie Pictura artists’ society in 1656, and he was then immediately elected warden, a post which he held again in 1658-59, and another three times in 1665-69. Although repeatedly nominated as dean he only occupied that position in 1669-70. The Pictura archives also state that he was a captain in the civic guard. Mijtens had certainly been an active member of the White Banner company of the St Sebastian civic guard since 1644. He was then the ensign, and was probably made its commander in 1660. In addition to these functions, he was a church councillor from 1646 to 1654 and a deacon of the Reformed Church.
Mijtens was primarily a portraitist, but he also made some history paintings in the form of biblical scenes and pastorals, and a few genre pieces. He received commissions from the Hague elite and members of the stadholder’s court, as well as from the daughters of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik living in Leeuwarden and Germany. Mijtens’s last dated pictures are the pendants of 1668 of Cornelis Tromp and his wife Margaretha van Raephorst.6 It is known from the sources that even in 1670, the year he died, he was working on portraits for Henriette Catharina, the princess consort of Anhalt-Dessau. After Mijtens’s death on 19 December and burial in the family grave in The Hague’s Grote Kerk on the 24th, one of these likenesses was completed by his son Daniel, who had moved back from Italy shortly before.7 Mijtens was reasonably well-off. In 1669 his wealth was assessed at 20,000 guilders for tax purposes. It had not all been earned from painting; some of it came from various legacies.
Richard Harmanni, 2023
References
J. van der Does, ’s-Graven-Hage, met de voornaemste plaetsen en vermaecklijckheden, The Hague 1668, pp. 91-92; J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 350; 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.], IV, Rotterdam 1881-82, passim; ibid., V, 1882-83, pp. 82, 84, 145-48, 153; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, II, Leipzig/Vienna 1910, pp. 211-12; Lundberg in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXV, Leipzig 1931, p. 317; Ekkart in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, pp. 206-10; A.N. Bauer, Jan Mijtens (1613/14-1670): Leben und Werk, Petersberg 2006, pp. 20-28, 129-50 (documents); Bauer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXXXIX, Munich/Leipzig 2016, p. 424
Entry
Six of the sixteen surviving pendant portraits by Jan Mijtens are in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. The earliest of these is the pair of Jacob de Witte, shown here, and his wife Jacoba van Orliens (SK-A-3022; also fig. a). Only the man’s picture bears the date 1660, but it can be taken as read that both were painted in the same year. The couple had married shortly before, on 15 October 1659.8 De Witte, who had studied law in Leiden, occupied various government posts, including councillor, burgomaster and treasurer of the town of Zierikzee, Chief Dike-Grave of the island of Schouwen and Steward-General of Zeeland Beoosten-Schelde (the northern part of the present-day province of Zeeland). The young Jacoba, who had just celebrated her 16th birthday at the time of their wedding, was born into a regent family of Middelburg.
Jacob de Witte is depicted at three-quarter length against the backdrop of a majestic tree trunk, with a view into a distant landscape to the right. He is dressed in a fanciful costume consisting of a white shirt and a loose tunic with a dark silk robe draped around it. The strips of fabric hanging at the bottom of the light brown cloak allude to the pteruges of leather or metal worn by Roman generals below their cuirasses. Royalty and other rulers had delighted in wearing them in portraits as an allusion to their classical predecessors.9 In the 1660s the practice was also adopted by members of the elite.10 The fact that De Witte held no military rank will have been the reason for the cursory look of the accessory here. He is resting his right hand lightly on his hip and has laid the other one on the head of a greyhound. This reference to the chase extends into the landscape to the right of the tree, where a hunter and two dogs are running by. De Witte was not yet the owner of the manor of Haamstede and its castle when the picture was made. He only acquired them in 1678, a year before his death. Although it is not known which estate he did possess at the time of this painting, there must have been one, because hunting rights were reserved for those who enjoyed manorial rights.
Jacoba van Orliens is shown with a large rock behind her, also with a vista in the background, here on the left. Like her husband she is wearing an unreal, fancy costume. Both companion pieces belong to the genre of fashionable courtly portraits with which Adriaen Hanneman and Pieter Nason also scored a great success with their clients in The Hague.11 Starting in the 1660s Mijtens painted many individual likenesses and pairs of this type, and the early one of Jacob de Witte, in particular, shows that he had already fully mastered it at the time.12 The sitters are usually extravagantly attired and are posed against a rock or large tree with a view through into an idealized Italianate landscape to one side.
Both pictures were hung in Haamstede Castle when Jacob de Witte came into possession of it in 1678, and with the property they passed down through the Mogge and Muilman families until 1853, when the manor was sold by the last descendant, Anna-Maria Mogge Muilman. At the same time she bequeathed these pendants and other family portraits to Adriaan van der Hoop, who promised that he would exclude them from any sale of his collection.13 They went to his heirs after he died and were donated to the Rijksmuseum in 1924, together with three more paintings,14 but none of the other family portraits from Haamstede Castle given to Van der Hoop were among them.
Richard Harmanni, 2023
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
For both the present painting (SK-A-3021) and its pendant (SK-A-3022)
P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Framing in the Golden Age: Picture and Frame in 17th-Century Holland, Zwolle 1995, p. 214; A. Pollmer, ‘Catalogus van de schilderijen in de verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop’, in E. Bergvelt et al., De Hollandse meesters van een Amsterdamse bankier: De verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; Rijksmuseum) 2004-05, pp. 135-95, esp. p. 190, nos. B3, B4; A.N. Bauer, Jan Mijtens (1613/14-1670): Leben und Werk, Petersberg 2006, pp. 222-23, nos. A97, A98, with earlier literature
Collection catalogues
1926, p. 140, no. 1703a; 1934, p. 204, no. 1703a; 1960, p. 223, no. 1703 A 1; 1976, p. 407, no. A 3021
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2023, 'Jan Mijtens, Portrait of Jacob de Witte (1628-1679), 1660', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9495
(accessed 20 September 2024 22:31:23).