Object data
oil on panel
support: height 105.5 cm × width 79.3 cm
outer size: depth 8.7 cm (support incl. frame)
Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy (attributed to)
Portrait of Pieter van Son (c. 1590-1654)
c. 1622 - c. 1629
Inscriptions
- coat of arms, top right: three triple gold bars on a black field with a red chief charged with a standing gold lion. Crest: a barred helmet half-turned to the left surmounted by a lion rampant, with mantling and torse
Technical notes
The support consists of three vertically grained oak planks and is bevelled on the bottom. The panel was shaved down for cradling, which may have been necessitated by a loose glued join. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1609. The panel could have been ready for use by 1620, but a date in or after 1626 is more likely. The ground layer is thin and transparent. The paint layers were applied smoothly, with some impasto for the highlights. Pickenoy worked from the background to the foreground, alternating between the opaque and the transparent. There are a few pentimenti. Raking light reveals a modification by the right arm, and the sitter’s left thumb was altered slightly.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 13 April 2005
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 10 June 2005
Condition
Fair. There is slight abrasion near the ruff, and blanching in the background at top left. The retouchings and filling in the join are discoloured. There is residue of an old varnish which is matte in places.
Provenance
...; sale, Edward Georg Coles (Pebble Combe, Headley, Epsom, and subsequently Tumber House, Headley), London (Christie’s), 19 November 1962, no. 27;...; anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 14 April 1978, no. 100, £ 7,500;...; anonymous sale, London (Christie’s), 14 December 1990, no. 117;...; private collection, Turin;1...; sale, London (Christie’s), 7 July 2000, no. 15, to the museum
Object number: SK-A-4956
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the BankGiro Lottery
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy (Amsterdam 1588 - Amsterdam 1650/56)
Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy was born in Amsterdam in 1588 as the eldest son of the armorial stonemason Elias Claesz Pickenoy and his wife Heijltje Laurens s’Jonge, both of whom were born in Antwerp. In 1621 the painter married Levina Bouwens. In 1629 and 1634 Pickenoy was warden of the Guild of St Luke. He died between May 1650 and October 1656. Pickenoy was a successful artist, with an oeuvre numbering dozens of individual portraits, as well as groups of regents and civic guardsmen. A very different part of his output consists of several paintings of mythological and religious subjects, including a Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery.2
Stylistic evidence suggests that he was trained by Cornelis van der Voort, the most influential portrait painter in Amsterdam in the 1610s and 20s. Pickenoy’s earliest known work is The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Sebastiaen Egbertsz de Vrij of 1619.3 Despite competition from artists like Rembrandt and Thomas de Keyser, Pickenoy was the leading portraitist in Amsterdam in the 1630s – a position he lost in the 1640s to Bartholomeus van der Helst, who may have been his pupil. In that period, though, he did make a few very large civic guard pieces, among them Officers and Other Civic Guardsmen of the IVth District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Jan Claesz van Vlooswijck and Lieutenant Gerrit Hudde of 1642 (SK-C-1177).
Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007
References
Six 1886, pp. 81-108; Lelienfeld in Thieme/Becker X, 1914, p. 458; Dudok van Heel 1985, pp. 152-60; Ekkart in Amsterdam 1993, p. 313; Briels 1997, p. 368
Entry
Nicolaes Pickenoy probably painted the portrait of Pieter van Son (c. 1590-1654, see SK-A-4956) and its pendant of his wife Johanna le Maire (c. 1601-60, shown here) shortly after their marriage on 14 June 1622 in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam.4 They may even have been made as keepsakes, for the sitters appear to be wearing their wedding attire. On their wedding day, women wore gloves specially made for the occasion. The bride only took off her glove at the moment the marriage was solemnized, when the couple shook each other’s right hand. Exceptionally, Pickenoy’s paintings and the bride’s gloves were preserved together for a long time, and were recently reunited (see BK-1978-48-A).5 They are the same gloves as those depicted by Pickenoy.
Pieter van Son hailed from Breda, and in 1622 he was living behind the Zuiderkerk in Amsterdam. Johanna le Maire was the daughter of Isaäc le Maire, a merchant from Antwerp who had settled in Amsterdam and played an important part in the trade with the East Indies.6 Seven children were born to the couple between 1623 and 1640. Van Son became a member of the brokers’ guild on 8 December 1629.
These two portraits can be dated c. 1622-29, relatively early in Pickenoy’s career.7 Stylistically they are not that far removed from the portraits by his probable teacher, Cornelis van der Voort.8 It is very unlikely that the beautiful family coats of arms are by Pickenoy; they were probably added a little later in the 17th century. There is no reason to doubt the validity of the arms, however, which are indeed those of the sitters.9
Copies after these portraits appeared at auction in 1994.10
Everhard Korthals Altes, 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. 237.
Literature
Du Mortier 1984, pp. 189-201
Collection catalogues
2007, no. 237
Citation
E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'attributed to Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy, Portrait of Pieter van Son (c. 1590-1654), c. 1622 - c. 1629', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.360664
(accessed 12 November 2024 00:16:22).