Object data
oil on panel
support: height 118.3 cm × width 90.4 cm
outer size: depth 7.8 cm (support incl. frame)
Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy
Portrait of Jochem Hendricksz Swartenhont (1566-1627)
1627
Inscriptions
- inscription and date, top right: Aetatis. suae. 62. Anº. 1627
Technical notes
The support consists of three vertically grained oak planks and is bevelled on the top, left and right sides. The ground layer is thin and transparent, and is covered with paint overall, apart from the passage between the sitter’s right hand and the edge of the table. The paint layers were applied smoothly, with some impasto for details such as the edges of the sash and the gold chain. The white ruff was built up with a light underpaint. There is a small pentimento in the table.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 13 April 2005
Condition
Good. The varnish is discoloured.
Conservation
- W.A. Hopman, 1883: varnish regenerated
Provenance
? Commissioned by or for the sitter; ? his eldest daughter, Angelica Swartenhondt (1607-78), Amsterdam; ? Her cousin, Maria Rey (c. 1631-1703), Amsterdam; ? her eldest son, Hendrick Meulenaer (1650-1704), Amsterdam; ? his daughter, Maria Meulenaer (1678-1743), Amsterdam; ? her husband, Pieter Schout Muilman (1672-1757), Amsterdam; ? his son, Dionis Muilman (1702-72), Amsterdam; ? his younger brother, Nicolaas Muilman (1709-90), Amsterdam; ? his eldest son, Henric Muilman (1743-1812), Amsterdam; ? his son, Willem Ferdinand Mogge Muilman (1778-1849), Amsterdam; ? his wife, Magdalena Antonia Muilman (1788-1853), Amsterdam; ? her daughter, Anna Maria van de Poll-Mogge Muilman (1811-78), Amsterdam; her stepson, Jacobus Salomon Hendrik van de Poll (1837-80), Amsterdam; by whom bequeathed to the museum, 1880; on loan to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum, 4 December 1972 to 10 March 19981
Object number: SK-A-705
Credit line: Jonkheer J.S.H. van de Poll Bequest, Amsterdam
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
This 1627 portrait of a naval officer with a gold chain has been attributed to Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy, which is very likely, given the stylistic similarities with other portraits of his from that period. Jochem Hendricksz Swartenhont (1566-1627) was probably painted in the last year of his life, although it is also possible that this is a posthumous likeness. Swartenhont was a very wellknown figure around Amsterdam, owned a house called ‘In den Swarten Hondt’ (At the Black Dog) in Zeedijk, and was Lieutenant-Admiral of the Dutch fleet that defeated the Spanish off Gibraltar in 1622.4 By way of thanks he was presented with a gold chain with the portrait of Prince Maurits, which he is wearing here. Swartenhont also ran an inn, the ‘Prince van Orangien’, where the guests of prominent Amsterdam citizens lodged.
Swartenhont was the husband of Elisabeth Bas, who is best-known from a famous portrait of her (SK-A-714) that was bequeathed to the Rijksmuseum at the end of the 19th century, together with this one of her husband. That portrait is currently attributed to Ferdinand Bol, but for a long time it was regarded as a Rembrandt. It is almost the same size as Swartenhont’s portrait. The two works can be traced back to the original patrons with a reasonable degree of certainty. In a will made by Elisabeth Bason 1 November 1648 mention is made of ‘two portraits of her, the testatrix, and of her husband’, which may have been the works by Pickenoy and Bol.5
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. 235.
Literature
Six 1886, p. 87 (as Werner van den Valckert); Frederiks 1887, pp. 265-78 (as possibly by Werner van den Valckert); Kolleman 1967, pp. 57-62; Kolleman 1971, pp. 114-16; Van Thiel in Berlin etc. 1991, p. 326
Collection catalogues
1880, pp. 487-88, no. 244a (as Paulus Moreelse); 1887, p. 172, no. 1468 (as Werner van den Valckert); 1903, p. 95, no. 900; 1934, p. 94, no. 900; 1976, pp. 218-19, no. A 705; 2007, no. 235
Citation
E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy, Portrait of Jochem Hendricksz Swartenhont (1566-1627), 1627', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6996
(accessed 22 November 2024 16:14:43).