Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 82 cm × width 66.7 cm
Johannes Verspronck
Portrait of a Girl Dressed in Blue
1641
Inscriptions
- signature and date, bottom left (‘ver’ ligated): J verSpronck an° 1641:
Technical notes
Support The plain-weave canvas, with an average of approx. 12.9 horizontal (weft) by 13.5 vertical (warp) threads per centimetre, has been glue-paste lined. The tacking edges at the top and bottom and on the right have been trimmed, the one on the left has been preserved. There is a selvedge on the left. Cusping is present on all sides. Judging by the crack pattern parallel to the edges the bars of the original strainer were approx. 4-4.5 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The triple ground extends up to the current edges of the canvas at the top and bottom and on the right, and over the left tacking edge. The first, brick-red layer consists mostly of fine red pigment particles with a small amount of black, transparent and coarse white pigment particles. The second, light pink layer contains fine and coarse white pigment particles with an addition of red, black and fine earth pigment particles. The third, whitish-pink layer has a similar composition but with slightly more white pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography and infrared photography revealed two types of underdrawing, parts of which are also faintly visible to the naked eye. Sketchy lines in a dry medium describe the hair, chin, the lace in the girl’s left sleeve and the position of the bracelet. An earlier, wider contour of the dress to the right of the current version was indicated in a wet medium, probably a black paint.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the canvas at the top and bottom and on the right, and almost up to the left tacking edge. The background was applied in two layers. The sitter was left in reserve in the initial, light brown layer. The face was first indicated with translucent browns and further built up wet in wet and from dark to light, with the highlights in the eyes and the orange of the cheeks, chin and forehead as final touches. The dress was laid in with a medium blue and the hands were placed on top, after which dark and lighter blues were added wet in wet to suggest the folds in the dress. Parts of the lace pattern, notably in the bottom right corner of the collar, were incised into the wet paint. The ground was left visible in the dress, lending it a pinkish tone. The second layer of the background, consisting of a thin, translucent dark brown glaze, was applied to suggest depth, and small adjustments were made to contours, sometimes continuing over the finished background. The fan was added and finally the dress was embellished with a subtle pattern in different shades of blue and with gold-coloured trimmings. The paint surface is smooth overall, with a few impasted brushstrokes for the lace, embellishments and highlights.
Anna Krekeler, 2024
Scientific examination and reports
- paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. R70/1-6, 29 February 2000
- infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 18 August 2008
- paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-3064/1-2, 18 August 2008
- technical report: A. Krekeler / E. Smeenk-Metz / Z. Benders, RMA, 18 August 2008
- infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 3 February 2009
- X-radiography: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 1927 (1-6), 5 April 2011
- infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 1 July 2013
Literature scientific examination and reports
A. Krekeler et al., ‘Consistent Choices: A Technical Study of Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck’s Portraits in the Rijksmuseum’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 62 (2014), pp. 2-23
Condition
Good. There is a pronounced crack pattern throughout the paint layer. The blue of the dress has faded except for the bottom edge covered by the frame.
Conservation
- M. Bijl, 1999: complete restoration
Provenance
…; ? collection Von Hendorff;1 ? his posthumous sale, Oldenburg (auction house not known), 1800, to Peter Friedrich Ludwig, Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1755-1829), Augusteum, Oldenburg;2 first documented in his collection in 1805;3 by descent to Friedrich August, Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1852-1931); from whom purchased by Mari Paul Voûte (1856-1928), Amsterdam, through the mediation of the dealer A.W.M. Mensing, in or before 1922;4 from whom on loan to the museum, 1922-28; from whom, with SK-A-3065 and SK-A-3066, fl. 100,000, to the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1928;5 donated to the museum by the Vereniging Rembrandt, November 1928
Object number: SK-A-3064
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Johannes Verspronck (Haarlem 1600/03 - Haarlem 1662)
Johannes Verspronck, who is sometimes wrongly called Gerard Sprong in older sources on the basis of passages in Schrevelius and Houbraken, was born on an unknown date. Early authors favoured 1597 or 1606-09, but it has since been established that the place and year of his birth must have been Haarlem between 1600 and 1603. He came from a fairly prosperous family who probably subscribed to the Catholic faith. His most likely teacher was his father, Cornelis Engelsz of Gouda, a painter of portraits and kitchen still lifes. It is also assumed on stylistic grounds that the young Verspronck was apprenticed to Frans Hals. He registered with the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1632, as did his younger brother Jochem, none of whose works has survived. Verspronck never held guild office, although he was once, in 1644, a candidate for the post of warden. He never married, and continued living in his parents’ house with an unwed sister and brother. The three of them later bought a neighbouring property. It is clear from the fact that he loaned several sums of money to family members that he was not poor. He was buried in Haarlem’s Grote Kerk on 30 June 1662.
Verspronck was one of the leading portraitists of seventeenth-century Haarlem. His known oeuvre consists of more than 100 paintings, all but one or two in that genre. They include two group portraits: The Regentesses of the Grote or St Elizabeth Hospital in Haarlem of 1641 and The Regentesses of the Holy Spirit Almshouse in Haarlem of 1642.6 Houbraken’s statement that Verspronck also produced civic guard pieces is probably due to confusion with the father’s work. His earliest dated pictures are from 1634 and the last one, a likeness of the parish priest Augustinus Alstenius Bloemert, from 1658.7
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024
References
T. Schrevelius, Harlemias, Haarlem 1648, p. 382; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 123; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, p. 224; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, II, Leipzig/Vienna 1910, p. 783; Lilienfeld in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXIV, Leipzig 1940, p. 302; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, pp. 13-20; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, pp. 421, 1034, 1036, 1041; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 323-24; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Portretten door Johannes Verspronck in meervoud’, De Nederlandsche Leeuw 125 (2008), cols. 153-55; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 9-11
Entry
‘The Girl in Blue’, as this work has become known, is one of the finest portraits of a child in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, and is an undoubted Verspronck masterpiece.8 Its attractiveness is due mainly to the girl’s blue damask dress trimmed with gold lace and the lifelike rendering of her face.9 Her gaze is serious and her pose dignified, but there is a smile playing around her lips – a combination that typifies many of the artist’s likenesses..
It has so far proved impossible to identify the girl, who is thought to be between six and ten years old. At the beginning of the nineteenth century her portrait was with three others by Verspronck in Oldenburg, in the north-west of Germany. Two of them, companion pieces of a husband and wife from 1640 and 1641, are the same size as the present picture.10 The woman is in the same pose as the girl and is also holding a feathered fan. It has long been assumed that the three paintings belong together and that the couple are the girl’s parents. The fourth portrait by Verspronck in the Oldenburg collection is dated 1645 and shows a male sitter,11 probably a member of the same family.12
It is known that the pendants of the married couple and the 1645 male portrait were bought from the Von Hendorff collection in or before 1800.13 It is likely that ‘The Girl in Blue’ belonged to the same owner, but that provenance is not documented.14 It is not impossible that the family group was originally larger.15
When the girl’s portrait and those of her alleged parents came on the market in 1922, the Rembrandt Association tried to buy them, but since the seller could not or did not want to wait until the funds became available the pendants of the couple were sold to another party.16 They eventually returned to the Netherlands by a circuitous route and were then acquired by the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede.
It has been suggested that the present painting formed the basis for the 1645 portrait of a girl by Bartholomeus van der Helst now in London.17 Like the young sitter in the Rijksmuseum she is holding an ostrich feather fan, and there are also similarities in her blue dress with gold lace, her hair style and jewellery, although she is a little more sumptuously attired than her Amsterdam counterpart. However, since the two artists worked in different cities it is not very likely that Van der Helst knew Verspronck’s portrait.18
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, pp. 44, 58, 86-87, no. 33; Ekkart in J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, pp. 174-76, no. 38; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 7-8, 35-45
Collection catalogues
1934, p. 300, no. 2537a; 1960, p. 326, no. 2536 A1; 1976, p. 575, no. A 3064
Citation
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of a Girl Dressed in Blue, 1641', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6433
(accessed 22 November 2024 00:32:15).