Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 92 cm × width 75.2 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. SK-L-4523)
Johannes Verspronck
Portrait of Adriana Croes (1599-1656)
1644
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower left (‘ver’ ligated): J verSpronck: an°: 1644:
Technical notes
Support The plain-weave canvas, with an average of approx. 13.9 horizontal (warp) by 13.9 vertical (weft) threads per centimetre, has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been trimmed. Cusping is present on all sides.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the trimmed edges of the canvas. The first, beige layer consists of earth and black pigment particles with an addition of transparent and coarse white pigment particles. The second, whitish-pink layer contains fine earth pigment particles and some black, blue and both fine and coarse white pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography revealed two types of underdrawing, parts of which are also faintly visible to the naked eye in light areas. Loose, sketchy lines in a dry medium describe the head, cap, hair, eyes, nose, mouth and collar. The hands and dress were indicated in a wet medium, probably a dark paint. A discarded initial outline in paint is visible, also to the naked eye, to the right of the woman. The positions of the nose, left eyebrow and collar were not quite followed in the painting phase.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the trimmed edges of the canvas. The background was applied in two layers. The sitter was left in reserve in the initial, beige-brown layer. The face was undermodelled with translucent browns and further built up wet in wet and from dark to light. The deep shadows in the corners of the eyes and the line between the lips were indicated with a red lake. The collar was laid in with a thin, white paint, with a subtle transition to light grey at the edges by wet-in-wet blending. The shadows and highlights of the collar consist of thin, smoothly blended wet-in-wet applications of dark grey and white, and the cap, which was laid in with a thin, grey paint, was worked up in a similar fashion. The dress was underpainted in dark grey, followed by blacks and greys applied wet in wet for the folds. Vertical, horizontal and semi-circular lines were incised into the wet paint to indicate the buttons and the lace on the dress, which were then further modelled with a light grey paint. Final vigorous black brushstrokes further emphasize some of the folds. The hands were added wet in wet, with rather thick paint on top of the dark grey base colour of the dress. The second layer of the background, consisting of thinly applied translucent greens, gives depth and creates a faint halo effect where it does not quite reach the sitter’s contours. The paint surface is smooth except for slight impasto in the embellishments of the clothes, in the pointed highlights of the eyes and in some brushstrokes in the face and hands.
Anna Krekeler, 2024
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 16 May 2008
- X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1838 (1-6), 14 July 2008
- paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-4998/1-5, 2 September 2008
- infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 23 October 2008
- infrared reflectography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 25 May 2009
- infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 15 June 2009
- technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 15 June 2009
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. A crack pattern running nearly parallel to the bottom and right edges at approx. 1.5 cm suggests that the canvas was at some point transferred onto a smaller stretcher and tilted slightly to the left.
Conservation
- A. Krekeler, 2008 - 2009: complete restoration
Provenance
? Commissioned by or for the sitter; probate inventory, her daughter, Maria van Strijp (1627-1707), widow of Eduard Wallis, Haarlem, 17 April 1707 (‘Twee dito [portraits] vande vader en moeder van Maria van Strijp’);1 by descent to Jonkvrouw Anna Hubertina van Reenen, née Van Reenen (1892-1974), Nijmegen and Laren; her daughter, Jonkvrouw Dorothea Storm de Grave, née Van Reenen (1916-2006), Huis ter Heide, 1974; purchased from her estate by the museum, with SK-A-4997, SK-A-4999 and SK-A-5000, 3 March 2008
Object number: SK-A-4998
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the BankGiro Lottery
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 1642.2 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 portrait of Adriana Croes forms an ensemble with those of her daughter Maria van Strijp, the latter’s husband Eduard Wallis and probably a male relative of his, which entered the Rijksmuseum in 2008.4 The four works, all by Johannes Verspronck, passed by descent for over three centuries and are still together. The present painting is the oldest in the small Wallis-Van Strijp gallery, and is the only one on canvas.
At the age of 19 Adriana Croes married the cloth merchant Hendrick Pietersz van Strijp, to whom she bore five daughters. In 1644, five years after his death, she had herself immortalized by Verspronck, who was one of the leading portraitists in Haarlem at the time along with Frans Hals.5 The painting may have been conceived as a pendant to the one of her deceased husband, for it is listed in the inventory of her daughter Maria together with one of Van Strijp.6 Adriana Croes’s pose, standing with her body turned well away from the viewer, is typical of the portraits that Verspronck made from around 1640 onwards.
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. 47, 98, no. 54; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 48-49
Citation
Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of Adriana Croes (1599-1656), 1644', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.455606
(accessed 22 November 2024 11:01:39).