Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 110.5 cm × width 90.5 cm
outersize: depth 7.8 cm (support incl. frame)
Jan Mijtens
Portrait of Maria de Witte Françoisdr (1616-1670)
1661
Inscriptions
- signature, date and inscription, upper right (A and E ligated): ÆT: 45 / Aº: 1661. / jANMYTENS. F.
Technical notes
Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Cusping is clearly visible at the top and bottom and on the left. Vague linear crack patterns parallel to the left and right edges may correspond to the bars 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. 1.5 cm at the top, by approx. 0.7 cm at the bottom and by approx. 0.1 cm on the left and right.
Preparatory layers The single, light, warm grey ground extends over the tacking edges, completely covering the ones at the top and bottom. 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, dark contour lines at the fingers of both hands and below the sleeves.
Paint layers The paint extends over the tacking edges. An initial lay-in of warm earth colours is visible in thin, dark areas, for example around the thumb and fingers of the sitter’s right hand. It is also apparent to the naked eye at a few transitions and at the edges of some parts of the reserves for the figure and the vista. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light. The facial features were carefully and sharply delineated, including the eyelashes. A dark red was used for the nostrils and between the lips. The dress was applied wet in wet and constructed with pink, orange and yellow for the mid-tones and highlights. A cross-section of a paint sample taken from a dark shadow of the dress shows the grey ground, followed by a deep orange mid-tone glazed with a deep red, and finally some black for further depth of the shadow. A dark line, visible under the ruffle of the right sleeve cuff, indicates a compositional change.
Gwen Tauber, 2023
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder / L. Sozzani, RMA, 27 January 1999
- infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 19 February 2009
- paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-A-747/1-2, 19 February 2009
- technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 19 February 2009
Condition
Fair. The painting was flattened during lining. A profusion of dark spots, possibly varnish remnants or the result of pigment discolouration, is clearly visible. The red parts of the dress appear pink and the foliage of the tree has turned bluish.
Provenance
For both the present painting (SK-A-747) and its pendant (SK-A-746)
…; ? 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-747
Copyright: Public domain
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 artists’ society Confrerie Pictura 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 man (SK-A-746; 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, a famous lawyer and poet who was appointed Pensionary of Middelburg in 1606.7 Johan himself chose a military career, and one of his postings was as colonel of a guards regiment in the service of the province of Holland.
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.8 She bore him 12 children, 5 boys and 7 girls, 4 of whom would die at an early age. In 1660 the well-to-do family moved into a house, one of the biggest, on the south side of Westeinde in The Hague, the street where Mijtens lived. Maria died in that city in 1670, followed by her husband only on 9 August 1695, in Breda.
Maria de Witte is portrayed in a fanciful reddish-brown costume with silk sleeves and a transparent open collar, with trimmings of precious stones and pearls. In the left background is a French landscape garden. In her right hand she is holding a sprig of yellow jasmine (Jasminum fruticans),9 probably picked from the bush behind her. The plant originally grew around the Mediterranean, but had been cultivated in the northern Netherlands since around 1570. No specific significance is attached to its flowers, but one could associate it with the meaning of the word ‘jasmine’ in Persian, ‘gift of God’. Johan van Beaumont is depicted with a large body of water behind him, probably the Brielse Maas with the fortified town of Brielle, of which he was the commandant. The balustrade in his painting – the only time Mijtens employed this popular motif in Dutch portraiture since the 1630s – does not continue over into the pendant of his wife.
The two canvasses 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-747) and its pendant (SK-A-746)
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. 1004; 1903, p. 189, no. 1702; 1934, p. 204, no. 1702; 1976, p. 407, no. A 747
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2023, 'Jan Mijtens, Portrait of Maria de Witte Françoisdr (1616-1670), 1661', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4548
(accessed 27 December 2024 19:45:42).