Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 85 cm × width 73 cm
outer size: depth 5 cm (support incl. frame)
Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen I
Portrait of Elisabeth Vervoorn (1617-57)
1650
Inscriptions
- label, on the reverse: Elizabeth Vervoorn / geboren 9 September 1617 / overleden 17 October 1657 / trouwt 9 Mei 1648. met / Mr. Johan van Someren / geboren 3 Juli 1622 / Raad Pensionaris van Nij[...] / hebb[...] / geboren [...] / trouwt [...] / Mr. Zeger[...] / Hoven va[...] / geboren [...] (Elizabeth Vervoorn, born 9 September 1617, died 17 October 1657, marries 9 May 1648 Mr Johan van Someren, born 3 July 1622, Pensionary of Nij[...] hav[...] born [...] marries [...] Mr Zeger[...] Courts o[...] born [...])
Technical notes
The support is a fine-weave canvas that has been lined. It lacks its original tacking edges. The ground layer is light in colour. The paint was generally applied very smoothly, with impasted highlights, but the cuff of the sitter’s right hand and the background are painted in a looser manner. There is a pentimento in the sitter’s collar.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 18 September 2004
Condition
Fair. There are several old tears in the canvas. Discoloured retouchings are present, notably in the sitter’s hands and below her collar. The thick varnish layer was unevenly applied and is discoloured.
Original framing
Bifacial flat frames of ebonised conifer1
Provenance
? Commissioned by Johan van Someren and Elisabeth Vervoorn; ? their daughter Clara van Someren (1654-1709); ? her son Jacob Tierens (1691-1760); ? his son Simon Tierens (1716-98); ? his son Seger Tierens (1749-94); ? his son Hendrik A.C. Tierens (1794-1851); ? his daughter Cornelia H.A. Tierens (1818-89); ? her daughter Cecilia G. Verhagen (1849-1934); her son Lieutenant-Colonel Marius C. van Houten, Doorn, Utrecht;2 by whom donated to the museum, 1933, but kept in usufruct;3 transferred to the museum, as attributed to Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen I, 1953
Object number: SK-A-3858
Credit line: Gift of M.C. van Houten, Doorn
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen I (London 1593 - Utrecht 1661)
Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen, who signed his works as Jonson van Ceulen, was born into an Antwerp family that originally came from Cologne. He was baptized in London on 14 October 1593. It has been suggested that he was trained in the Netherlands. Janssens van Ceulen married Elisabeth Beck or Beke from Colchester on 16 July 1622, with whom he lived in Blackfriars. On 5 December 1632, he was appointed ‘his Majesty’s servant in the quality of picture maker to his Majesty’, King Charles I. In 1643, he and his family fled the Civil War and settled in Middelburg, where he entered the Guild of St Luke. In 1646 he is documented as living in Amsterdam. Six years later he was in Utrecht, where he and his wife made their will on 7 November 1652. He died in Utrecht in early August 1661.
Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen was a portrait painter. At the beginning of his career, much of his output consisted of bust-length portraits. In the Netherlands, he painted elegant half or three-quarter length figures that reveal the influence of Anthony van Dyck. There are also some group portraits, such as the Middelburg archers’ guild.4 Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen II (1635-1715) was his pupil and a close follower.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
De Bie 1661, pp. 298-99; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), p. 194; Houbraken II, 1719, pp. 224-25; Walpole 1862, I, pp. 211-15; Schneider in Thieme/Becker XIX, 1926, pp. 143-44; Edmond 1978, pp. 84-89; Ekkart in Turner 1996, XVII, pp. 644-46; Kollmann 2000, pp. 219-20; Hearn 2003
Entry
The sitters in this pendant pair are identified by the labels on the back of the paintings, which probably date from the early 19th century. Johan van Someren, who was born in Dordrecht on 3 July 1622, was the alderman responsible for waterways in Dordrecht, and Dike-Reeve of Oud-Beijerland. In 1655 he became Pensionary of Nijmegen. He died in 1676 in his birthplace of Dordrecht. Elisabeth Vervoorn of Gorinchem, whom he married in 1648, was the second of his three wives. Both Van Someren and Vervoorn enjoyed some fame as poets.5
Van Someren (see SK-A-3857) and Vervoorn (shown here) are shown half-length, seated against an indeterminate green-brown background. The pendants are still in their original frames.6 The hand of Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen I is mainly recognizable in the soft, melting outlines. These portraits, which are related to the one of Jan Cornelisz Geelvinck dated 1646,7 are among the most restrained works from the second half of the artist’s career. The attire is sober, there is no jewellery, and the sitters are in stilled poses. Van Someren has his right hand on his heart and his left hand on an open book, probably a Bible.8 Vervoorn has her hands crossed, unlike the elegant hands, some of them fingering their pearl necklaces and bracelets, in many other portraits by this artist.9
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. 157.
Literature
Van Thiel and Kloek in Amsterdam 1984b, pp. 150-51, no. 28; Van Thiel and Kloek in Van Thiel/De Bruyn Kops 1995, no. 28
Collection catalogues
1976, p. 308, nos. A 3857, A 3858; 2007, no. 157
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Cornelis (I) Jonson van Ceulen, Portrait of Elisabeth Vervoorn (1617-57), 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8852
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