Portrait of Pieter Jacobsz Schout (1570-1645)

1641

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 76.7 cm × width 64 cm
outer size: depth 8.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-2325)

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower right ('ver' ligated): J verSpronck: an° :1641

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is present on all sides.
Preparatory layers The triple ground extends up to the current edges of the canvas. 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.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography and infrared photography revealed sketchy lines of underdrawing in a dry medium describing the face, beard and collar.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the canvas. 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 then carefully built up from dark to light, leaving the underpaint partially uncovered around the nose. The hand was reserved in the coat, which consists of a grey layer with dark brushstrokes placed wet in wet on top to indicate the folds and shaded areas. Horizontal lines, incised into the wet paint to position the pattern, were left exposed in the final painting. The design was completed by placing black zigzag lines and small triangles. The collar was constructed on top of a light grey underlayer by adding white highlights and thin, dark paint to define the lit and shaded areas of the folds. After the second layer of the background, consisting of a thin, translucent dark brown glaze, had been applied the sitter’s contours were slightly adjusted, sometimes continuing over the finished background. The paint surface is smooth overall, with impasted brushstrokes in the face, collar and highlights.
Anna Krekeler, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder / G. Tauber, RMA, 14 May 1998
infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 18 July 2008
paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-380/1-2, 18 July 2008
technical report: Z. Benders / A. Krekeler / E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 18 July 2008
infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 26 June 2009
X-radiography: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. 1967 A1-3/B1-3, 10 November 2011
infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 30 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

Fair. There is a small, round deformation in the canvas with some paint loss in the centre of the bottom edge. A scratch of approx. 3 cm runs through the varnish and paint layers to the right of the sitter and there is a discoloured retouching on his forehead. The thick varnish has severely yellowed and saturates poorly.

Conservation

W.A. Hopman, 1878: canvas lined
J.A. Hesterman & Zn, 1906: repaired

Provenance

…; sale, Maurits Cornelis van Hall (1768-1858) et al., Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 27 April 1858, no. 131 (‘Portret van den Haarlemschen Burgemeester Kies’), fl. 29, to the museum, with 8 other portraits¹

Object number: SK-A-380

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 1642.² 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 1658.³

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

This is one of the earliest of Johannes Verspronck’s paintings in the Rijksmuseum, all of which date from the 1640s or early 1650s. It was acquired with eight other portraits at the Van Hall auction in 1858, where it was presented as a likeness of the Haarlem burgomaster Pieter Jansz Kies (c. 1536-1597). That identification was soon abandoned, since Kies died before Verspronck was born;⁴ doubt was already being cast in the earliest museum catalogue to list the picture.⁵ In 1880 the sitter was called Pieter Jacobsz Schout for the first time,⁶ which was probably inspired by a print by the Haarlem engraver Cornelis van Noorde (1731-1795), or by one of the preliminary drawings for it.⁷

Pieter Jacobsz Schout, or Schoudt, was a member of a Haarlem regent family who served as burgomaster between 1608 and 1612. He also occupied high offices in the local civic guard. He was dismissed as a city councillor in 1618, when Prince Maurits purged the Haarlem authorities of those with Remonstrant sympathies, which put an end to his career in public service.⁸ Verspronck portrayed him at the age of 71. He is in a rather formal pose at hip length, turned to the left and holding a hat. At one time there may have been a companion piece, because Schout’s wife, Anna Mattheusdr Steyn, was still alive in 1641, the year in which the present likeness was made.⁹ It is fairly certain that Verspronck also painted Schout’s son, Matthijs Pietersz (1611-1656) and his wife. Those works, which, going by what we know about Verspronck’s oeuvre, would have been pendants, do not appear to have survived, but their existence is documented by a drawn copy by Cornelis van Noorde that was auctioned in 1796.¹⁰ An earlier portrait of Pieter Jacobsz Schout can be seen in a civic guard piece of 1619 by Frans Pietersz de Grebber.¹¹

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. 45, 84-85, no. 30; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 29-30

Collection catalogues

1859, pp. 135-36, no. 293 II (as Portrait of Burgomaster Kies ?); 1880, p. 325, no. 379; 1887, p. 180, no. 1544; 1903, p. 283, no. 2536; 1934, p. 300, no. 2536; 1976, p. 575, no. A 380; 1992, p. 90, no. A 380

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of Pieter Jacobsz Schout (1570-1645), 1641', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6432

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