All works in Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum

Jacob Willemsz. Delff (II)

Portrait of Geertruyt, Margriet and Anna Delff, the Artist’s Daughters

1660

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height c. 202.5 cm × width c. 187 cm
outer size: depth 9 cm (support incl. frame)
total: weight 45 kg (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

Technical notes

Support The support consists of two pieces of similar plain-weave canvas with a horizontal seam at approx. 95 cm from the bottom, and has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Cusping is visible on all sides, though less so on the right. The bars of the original strainer left an imprint around the entire perimeter. At the top there are horizontal fold lines caused by reducing the height of the composition at some point by approx. 11 cm. The folded strip was later reintegrated in the painting.
Preparatory layers The thick ground consists of two beige layers composed of chalk and white, ochre-coloured, some red and very fine black pigment particles. The second ground contains slightly more of the coloured particles, as well as an umber-coloured pigment.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The composition was laid out in diluted brownish paint, containing mostly black, red and ochre and umber-coloured pigment particles, to indicate the main elements. These were then painted, leaving a reserve for the falcon, together with the putti and the statue. The sky and the landscape were added next, the former partly overlapping both angels. The thinner foliage of the trees was placed over the sky, which shows through. The falcon’s reserve was filled in and all the other components and details were then applied, with the bow for example going over the fingers of the girl in the middle. In general the execution was swift, with the white of the dog’s back being done wet in wet with the blue of the dress. The dog and the dresses, in particular the yellow one, were executed with impasto and bold brushstrokes, whereas the girls’ faces were done in a smoother manner. Some adjustments of the contours were made, for instance on the right side of the neck and the waist of the girl seated on the right.
Luuk Hoogstede, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 10 March 2003
  • paint samples: L. Hoogstede, RMA, nos. SK-A-861/1-2, 5 January 2009

Condition

Poor. The paint, which is moderately abraded, is fragile and has suffered from flaking, which has caused losses throughout. In particular, the sky was retouched and the upper part of the pitcher at top left was overpainted, very probably due to the previous folding of the canvas at the top. The varnish is discoloured and matte, and has an uneven gloss.

Conservation

  • J.A. Hesterman, 1905: canvas lined

Provenance

Chimney piece in the artist’s house ’t Wapen van Spangien, Delft;1 removed in 1863;2...; transferred from the Ministry of Finance to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 1959), without attribution, as Portrait of Three Girls, 1875; transferred to the museum, as Anthonie Palamedesz, Portrait of Three Girls, 1885; on loan to the Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, Muiden, 1905-49

Object number: SK-A-861

Copyright: Public domain

The artist

Entry

For a long time the identities of these three girls and the artist were unknown. Until well into the nineteenth century the canvas hung as an overmantel in the ‘lower salon’ of a house called ‘’t Wapen van Spangien’ (The Arms of Spain) on Oude Delft in Delft.5 Michiel van Mierevelt, whose name was occasionally associated with it because he lived there until his death in 1641,6 could not have been the painter, because the composition and the girls’ hairstyle and the pearls they are wearing point to a date around 1660.7 Anthonie Palamedesz, to whom it was attributed in a few of the museum’s collection catalogues, is also ruled out on stylistic grounds.

’t Wapen van Spangien turned out to be the residence of Jacob Willemsz Delff II around 1660, who had inherited the house after the death of Van Mierevelt, who had been his grandfather.8 The Rijksmuseum picture could be assigned to Delff on the basis of a closely related group portrait of his from the late 1640s showing the children of Admiral Maerten Harpertsz Tromp in a similar setting.9

In the knowledge that Delff had three daughters in 1660 whose ages match those of the girls depicted here, the mystery of their identities was solved. Seated on the left is Geertruyt, who was 15 in 1660. The others are respectively the 13 and 12-year-old Margriet and Anna. Delff’s two eldest children, who had died in infancy,10 are represented as angels in the sky, as was customary in seventeenth-century Dutch painting.

The girls are dressed in antique garb and are carrying hunting attributes, such as a falcon, a bow and a quiver of arrows, which suggests that their father wanted to portray them as goddesses of the hunt. Other details, such as the fountain, grapes, peaches and pearls, were common symbols of chastity and other female virtues.11

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

Literature

G. Wuestman, ‘“Drie meisjes met twee honden bij eene fontein zittende”: Een nieuwe toeschrijving en een nieuwe identificatie’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 52 (2004), pp. 130-35, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 204, no. 1838 (as manner of Anthonie Palamedesz, Portrait of Three Girls, dated 1660); 1976, p. 435, no. A 861 (as manner of Anthonie Palamedesz, Portrait of Three Girls)

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'Jacob Willemsz. (II) Delff, Portrait of Geertruyt, Margriet and Anna Delff, the Artist’s Daughters, 1660', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7034

(accessed 13 November 2024 03:56:00).

Footnotes