Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 223 cm × width 127 cm
Cornelis van der Voort
Portrait of Laurens Reael (1583-1637)
c. 1620
Technical notes
The portrait is on canvas with an average weave density that is slightly finer than that of the pendant (SK-A-3742). It has been lined, probably using glue. The ground is white. The sitter’s face was painted fairly smoothly, wet in wet, with the hairs of the beard and moustache being indicated with a fine brush. The clothing is depicted in great detail, but the draperies and the tablecloth were more coarsely executed, with highlights laid on with broad brushstrokes. Small areas of paint loss in the helmet and gloves expose the red of the tablecloth, so they were not reserved.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 20 April 2005
Condition
Fair. There is quite a lot of overpainting and retouching in both the figure and the background. The varnish has yellowed, and was applied unevenly.
Conservation
- H. Plagge, 1961: restored
Provenance
? Commissioned by or for Laurens Reael (1583-1637); ? his daughter Susanna Reael (1637-62), Amsterdam; ? her second husband Hiob de Wildt (1637-1704), Amsterdam; by descent to Maria S.T. de Wildt (1766-1851), with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428; transferred for safekeeping to the Charter Room in Leiden Town Hall, 13 April 1838;1 removed at the request of Frans de Wildt (1805-69), Amsterdam, 4 May 1839, with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428;2...; by descent to Frans de Wildt (1805-69), Amsterdam, with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428;3 his daughter, Johanna E. Backer, née de Wildt (1831-1908), with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428;4 her daughter, Jonkvrouw Anna M. Blaauw, née Backer (1860-1941) ’s-Graveland, with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428;5 her husband, Abraham J. Blaauw (1861-1945) ’s-Graveland, with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428;...; collection P. van Leeuwen-Boomkamp, Hilversum/Naarden, with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428; SNK, with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428; from which on loan to the museum, with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428, 1948; purchased by the museum, with pendant SK-A-3742/no. 428, July 19496
Object number: SK-A-3741
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Cornelis van der Voort (? Antwerp c. 1576 - Amsterdam 1624)
Cornelis van der Voort, who was probably born in Antwerp around 1576, came to Amsterdam with his parents as a child. His father, a cloth weaver by trade, received his citizenship in 1592. It is not known who taught the young Van der Voort to paint, but it has been suggested that it was either Aert Pietersz or Cornelis Ketel. On 24 October 1598 Van der Voort became betrothed to Truytgen Willemsdr. After his first wife’s death he became betrothed to Cornelia Brouwer of Dordrecht in 1613. In addition to being an artist, Van der Voort was an art collector or dealer, or both. In 1607 he bought paintings from the estate of Gillis van Coninxloo, and after an earlier sale in 1610 a large number of works he owned were auctioned on 7 April 1614. Van der Voort is documented as appraising paintings in 1612, 1620 and 1624. In 1615 and 1619 he was warden of the Guild of St Luke. He was buried in Amsterdam’s Zuiderkerk on 2 November 1624, and on 13 May 1625 paintings in his estate were sold at auction.
Van der Voort was one of Amsterdam’s leading portrait painters in the first quarter of the 17th century. Several of his group portraits are known. It is believed that he trained Thomas de Keyser (1596/97-1667) and Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy (1588-1650/56). His documented pupils were David Bailly (c. 1584/86-1657), Louis du Pré (dates unknown), Pieter Luycx (dates unknown), Dirk Harmensz (dates unknown) and his own son Pieter (dates unknown).
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fol. 300r; Orlers 1641, p. 371; De Roever 1885, pp. 187-207 (documents); De Roever 1887; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, p. 544; Briels 1997, p. 402
Entry
Laurens Reael was a director of the Dutch East India Company. He sailed for the East Indies in 1611 as commander of a company fleet. Four years later he was appointed governor of the Moluccas, and from 1616 to 1619 he was governor-general of the entire East Indies. While in that post he criticized the way his countrymen were curtailing the rights of the Moluccans. On his return to Holland in January 1620 he was awarded a gold chain by the States-General. He went on to hold various official positions, including vice-admiral of a Dutch fleet and Dutch ambassador to the English court, and was knighted by the King of England in 1625. He died in 1637.
The splendidly attired Reael is seen full-length in an aristocratic pose in keeping with his former position as governor-general. He is holding his military baton in his right hand, and on his chest is the chain presented to him by the States-General. Lying on the table on the right are gauntlets and a helmet with a plume of ostrich feathers.
This painting was exhibited several times in the mid-19th century as a work by Jan van Ravesteyn.7 It was then attributed to Thomas de Keyser, because it was thought that it was De Keyser’s portrait of Reael that had been praised by Joost van den Vondel.8 In 1888 Meijer identified it as a painting mentioned in the notes of Arnoldus Buchelius as being by Van der Voort.9 The Utrecht jurist Buchelius wrote that he had seen a ‘full-length’ portrait of Reael in Van der Voort’s studio in St Anthonisbreestraat, and it is very likely that he was referring to the present painting. Life-size, full-length portraits were still relatively rare in the northern Netherlands around 1620, and Cornelis van der Voort, who probably began painting this genre in the second half of the 1610s, largely contributed to its popularity.10
This means that the portrait dates from the year in which Reael returned from the East Indies. What is remarkable is the presence of the helmet and the iron gauntlets on the table, which according to Dudok van Heel are attributes of the nobility, to which Reael was only raised five years later.11 However, since they were painted on top of the red paint of the tablecloth, it is possible that they were added later.
The Rijksmuseum also has the companion piece to this portrait, in which Reael’s wife Suzanna Moor is shown against a similar background (see SK-A-3742). The differences in style and quality show that the two works are not by the same artist. Van der Voort quite simply could not have painted Moor, because he died five years before she and Reael married in August 1629.12 Her portrait must have been painted after 1629 as the pendant to the one of her husband.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 321.
Literature
Buchelius 1583-1639 (1928), p. 48; Meijer 1888, pp. 226-27; Ekkart 1988a, pp. 7-10; Jansen in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 598-99, no. 271, with earlier literature; Dudok van Heel 2002, pp. 48-49; Dudok van Heel in Amsterdam 2002a, p. 154
Collection catalogues
1960, p. 332, no. 2591 A 1; 1976, p. 588, no. A 3741; 2007, no. 321
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of Laurens Reael (1583-1637), c. 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9840
(accessed 10 November 2024 06:16:01).