Portrait of Johan van Beaumont (1609-1695)

1661

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 110.2 cm × width 90.3 cm
outersize: depth 8.2 cm (support incl. SK-L-6131)

Inscriptions

signature, date and inscription, lower right, on the pillar (j, A, N and M ligated): ÆT: 52. A°: 1661. / jANMijtens F:

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Slight cusping is visible at the bottom and on the left and right. Vague linear crack patterns parallel to the left and right edges and a more pronounced diagonal crack pattern in the corners may correspond to the bars and corner pieces of the original strainer. The initial sight size of the painting must have been larger, since the picture plane is folded over the current stretcher by approx. 2 cm at the top and by approx. 1-2 cm at the bottom and on the left and right.
Preparatory layers The single, light, warm grey ground extends over the tacking edges, completely covering the one at the top. It consists of coarse white pigment particles with an addition of earth pigments and a minimal amount of black pigment.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed vague contour lines at the fingers and tip of the nose.
Paint layers The paint extends over the tacking edges. An initial lay-in of warm earth colours is visible to the naked eye in thin, dark areas, and at a few transitions, for example along the curtain at the level of the shoulder. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, leaving the figure in reserve. The facial features were carefully and sharply delineated. A dark red was used for the nostrils and between the lips. The remarkably loosely executed curtain was added over the grey sky and constructed from a mid-tone red with strong bright red highlights and shadows of dark red glaze. The hilt of the sword was originally placed a bit further to the right, where a dark form in the balustrade can be discerned. The cuirass was slightly widened at the sitter’s right hip, and the armlet was narrowed in the crook of his left elbow. The contours of the last two fingers were adjusted with the background paint, thereby making a tighter grip for the hand.
Gwen Tauber, 2023

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder / L. Sozzani, RMA, 27 January 1999
paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, no. 126/3, 13 July 2005
infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 19 February 2009
paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-A-746/1-2, 19 February 2009
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 19 February 2009

Condition

Good. The painting was flattened during lining. A pigment change has reduced the saturation of the dark parts of the red curtain.

Provenance

For both the present painting (SK-A-746) and its pendant (SK-A-747)
…; ? sale, Ilpenstein Castle, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 3 December 1872, nos. 38, 39 (‘Portrait of a Dutch admiral and his wife’), fl. 260, to Willem Anthonij Hopman;…; ? sale, dowager Van Loon, née Van Winter (Amsterdam), Druyvesteyn (Haarlem), Ed. Croese (Amsterdam) et al. [anonymous section], Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 26 February 1878, no. 49, as A. Mytens (‘Portrait of Admiral Simon de Beaumont and his wife’), fl. 300, to Willem Anthonij Hopman;…; ? collection J.H. Cremer, Ouchy;¹…; from Willem Anthonij Hopman, fl. 700, to the museum, 1882²

Object number: SK-A-746

The artist

Jan Mijtens (The Hague c. 1613/14 - The Hague 1670)

Jan Mijtens was born in The Hague at the end of 1613 or in January 1614 as the son of David Mijtens and Judith Hennicx. His father was a saddler and a member of the prosperous middle class. The extended family came from Flanders originally and produced numerous painters who remained active in various European countries until the eighteenth century. Jan Mijtens very probably started his apprenticeship with his uncle Isaac Mijtens and trained in all likelihood briefly with the latter’s elder brother, Daniel Mijtens, who returned to The Hague in 1635 after many years in England.

In 1639 Mijtens registered as a master painter with the Guild of St Luke in The Hague. His earliest dated pictures, two group portraits, are from 1638.³ In 1642 he married his cousin Anna, the London-born daughter of his uncle Daniel. One of the couple’s children, named Daniel as well, followed in his father’s footsteps. Other pupils of Mijtens were Julius de Geest (1638/39-1699), son of the Frisian portraitist Wybrand de Geest, Nicolaes Lissant (1639/40-after 1696), Gerard de Nijst (dates unknown), Adriaen Stalpert van der Wiele (dates unknown), Pouwels van de Velde (dates unknown), Andries Thijsz de Wit (dates unknown) and Urbanus Talibert van Yperen (c. 1630-in or after 1682). Only the first two left works that have survived.

Mijtens became one of the first members of the newly founded Confrerie Pictura artists’ society in 1656, and he was then immediately elected warden, a post which he held again in 1658-59, and another three times in 1665-69. Although repeatedly nominated as dean he only occupied that position in 1669-70. The Pictura archives also state that he was a captain in the civic guard. Mijtens had certainly been an active member of the White Banner company of the St Sebastian civic guard since 1644. He was then the ensign, and was probably made its commander in 1660. In addition to these functions, he was a church councillor from 1646 to 1654 and a deacon of the Reformed Church.

Mijtens was primarily a portraitist, but he also made some history paintings in the form of biblical scenes and pastorals, and a few genre pieces. He received commissions from the Hague elite and members of the stadholder’s court, as well as from the daughters of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik living in Leeuwarden and Germany. Mijtens’s last dated pictures are the pendants of 1668 of Cornelis Tromp and his wife Margaretha van Raephorst.⁴ It is known from the sources that even in 1670, the year he died, he was working on portraits for Henriette Catharina, the princess consort of Anhalt-Dessau. After Mijtens’s death on 19 December and burial in the family grave in The Hague’s Grote Kerk on the 24th, one of these likenesses was completed by his son Daniel, who had moved back from Italy shortly before.⁵ Mijtens was reasonably well-off. In 1669 his wealth was assessed at 20,000 guilders for tax purposes. It had not all been earned from painting; some of it came from various legacies.

Richard Harmanni, 2023

References
J. van der Does, ’s-Graven-Hage, met de voornaemste plaetsen en vermaecklijckheden, The Hague 1668, pp. 91-92; J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 350; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], IV, Rotterdam 1881-82, passim; ibid., V, 1882-83, pp. 82, 84, 145-48, 153; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, II, Leipzig/Vienna 1910, pp. 211-12; Lundberg in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXV, Leipzig 1931, p. 317; Ekkart in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, pp. 206-10; A.N. Bauer, Jan Mijtens (1613/14-1670): Leben und Werk, Petersberg 2006, pp. 20-28, 129-50 (documents); Bauer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXXXIX, Munich/Leipzig 2016, p. 424

Entry

When this portrait and its pendant of a woman (SK-A-747; also fig. a) first came up for auction in 1872 the identity of the couple was unknown. After the pictures entered the Rijksmuseum in 1882 Obreen was able to identify the male sitter as Johan van Beaumont from the coat of arms present on the frame at the time,⁶ which was evidently replaced at a later date. He was the son of Simon Herbertsz van Beaumont and Arnoudina van Rosenburg, his father being a famous lawyer and poet who was appointed Pensionary of Middelburg in 1606, and that is probably also the city where Johan was born in 1609.⁷ He was a first cousin of Arnoudina van Beaumont, the second wife of Govert van Slingelandt, who had his former family painted by Jan Mijtens in 1657.⁸

Johan van Beaumont chose a military career, and one of his postings was as colonel of a guards regiment in the service of the province of Holland.⁹ In 1637 he married the seven years younger Maria de Witte in The Hague, who was the daughter of François de Witte, Deputy Clerk of the Law Court of Holland.¹⁰ She bore him 12 children, 5 boys and 7 girls, 4 of whom would die at an early age. In 1660 Van Beaumont bought a house, one of the biggest, on the south side of Westeinde in The Hague, the street where Mijtens lived. He was a very wealthy man whose taxable income was assessed at 125,000 guilders in 1674.¹¹ He died in Breda on 9 August 1695 and was buried there. His wife had already preceded him in The Hague in 1670.

Van Beaumont dons his armour and on the table beside him is his plumed helmet. The sword at his left side and the commander’s baton in his right hand proclaim his military status. Behind him is a large body of water with a church and its massive tower in the distance. This is probably a view across the Brielse Maas towards the fortified town of Brielle with its distinctive Sint-Catharijnekerk, of which Van Beaumont was the commandant.¹² Although balustrades had been a popular motif in Dutch portraits since the 1630s, and were still often found in the 1660s,¹³ this is the only time that Mijtens employed the device. His decision to use it would have been due to the need to depict a broad stretch of water. The balustrade does not continue over into the pendant of Maria de Witte, who is shown with a French landscape garden in the left background.

The two paintings were sold in 1872 at the auction of Ilpenstein Castle near Ilpendam, just north of Amsterdam. The property had passed down by descent in the De Graeff family since the 1630s, but no connection with the Van Beaumonts has been discovered. The portraits probably came to the estate through a purchase in the nineteenth century.

Richard Harmanni, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

For both the present painting (SK-A-746) and its pendant (SK-A-747)
A.N. Bauer, Jan Mijtens (1613/14-1670): Leben und Werk, Petersberg 2006, pp. 224-26, nos. A101, A102, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 119, no. 1003; 1903, p. 189, no. 1701; 1934, p. 204, no. 1701; 1976, p. 407, no. A 746

Citation

Richard Harmanni, 2023, 'Jan Mijtens, Portrait of Johan van Beaumont (1609-1695), 1661', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4549

(accessed 13 November 2024 04:35:22).

Figures

fig. a Jan Mijtens, *Portrait of Johan van Beaumont* (SK-A-746) and *Portrait of Maria de Witte Françoisdr* (SK-A-747)