Portrait of Nicolaes Blanckaert (1624-1703)

c. 1666

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 15.9 cm × width 11.9 cm
outer size: height 18.3 cm × width 13.7 cm × depth 1.8 cm

Inscriptions

signature, bottom right: Eversdijck fec.
inscription, top: INCERTUM QVO FATA TRAHANT / ÆT. XLII (It is uncertain where Fate will take us. At the age of 42)
inscription, bottom: MORIBVS ANTIQVIS / N. BLANCARDVS (On ancient customs. N. Blancardus)

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained, vertical oak plank is approx. 0.5 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has plane marks. Small wooden strips were glued to the top and bottom, probably to make the painting fit its present frame. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1628. The panel could have been ready for use by 1637, but a date in or after 1647 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, smooth, cream-coloured ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of white pigment and some slightly translucent cream-coloured pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in dry media, parts of which are also visible to the naked eye. Fine black lines indicate the position of the eyes, mouth and hair, with some hatching for the shadowed areas of the nose and cheek. The outlines for the niche, letters and clothing appear to have been executed in a shiny, greyish material, possibly silverpoint. Similar media seem to have been used in the pendant (SK-A-994). A few curly lines in the left background, with no apparent connection to the final painting, are vaguely visible to the naked eye.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support on the left and right, but not over the top and bottom edges. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, leaving a reserve for the figure. The thin paints were applied mostly wet in wet. Only the highlights have a slight impasto and were dabbed over dry paint, as were the light areas of the niche. The contour of the hair was adjusted over the background, extending beyond the reserve. The brushwork is fine and was applied with subtle transitions in colour and between light and dark passages. Infrared photography showed a dark area in the upper half of the picture plane, the edge of which runs diagonally through the sitter’s face, with no apparent relation to the underdrawing, paint or varnish layers.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 30 March 2010
paint samples: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, nos. SK-A-993/1-2, 30 March 2010
technical report: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 30 March 2010
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 28 January 2011

Condition

Poor. There are areas of raised paint, abrasion and tiny losses (along the grain of the wood) throughout, as well as a bigger loss, approx. 2 cm, in the right pier of the niche. Coarse white particles are visible in the clothing and the face has minute, dark, crater-like holes, possibly due to the formation of metal soaps. There is a scratch in the paint under the mouth. The varnish has slightly yellowed and saturates poorly, especially in the darker areas.

Provenance

For both the present painting (SK-A-993) and its pendant (SK-A-994)
? Commissioned by or for the sitters; their son, Stephanus Blankaart (1650-1704), Amsterdam; ? his wife, Isabella de Carpentier (1644-1730), Amsterdam; ? her son, Willem Blankaart (1683-1748), Utrecht; ? his son, Steven Willem Blankaart (?-1800) Utrecht; ? his daughter, Sara Isabella Geertruid Blankaart (c. 1760-1844), Utrecht;…; sale, G. Munnicks van Cleeff et al., Utrecht (T. de Bruyn), 3 November 1862 sqq., nos. 5-6, fl. 7.75;…; Georgina Wilhelmina Harriet Elouise Balfour van Burleigh, née Cantzlaar (1850-1925), Zutphen; from whom, with SK-A-992, fl. 400, to the Dutch Ministry of the Interior, for the museum, 10 March 1885¹

Object number: SK-A-993

The artist

Willem Eversdijck (Goes c. 1616/20 - Middelburg 1671)

Willem Eversdijck was born in Goes between 1610 and 1620 as the son of the Catholic painter Cornelis Willemsz Eversdijck. He trained as an artist in Antwerp, and in the 1633-34 financial year he was registered in the ledgers of the city’s Guild of St Luke as a pupil of Cornelis de Vos. He settled in Middelburg in or around 1642 and remained there for the rest of his life. He joined the local Guild of St Luke between 2 February 1652 and 18 April 1653. On 15 June 1653 he married Blasina van Ossewaarde in Goes. His earliest known signed and dated painting is a civic guard piece.² Eversdijck’s name appears several times in the guild archives, remarkably often for failing to turn up at the funerals of fellow members. The ownership of properties and a loan made to a shipowner suggest that he was reasonably well-off. Eversdijck died in Middelburg and was buried in Goes on 9 March 1671.

Eversdijck worked in several genres, but his extant oeuvre is small. It runs to around 20 paintings and includes several large group portraits, such as that of the members of the St Sebastian Guild of 1665.³ A few of his likenesses are known only from prints. The artist’s one documented pupil was Isaack Jansz Vleeshouwer, who studied with him in 1657-58.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

References
P. de la Rue, Geletterd Zeeland: Verdeeld in drie afdeelingen, bevattende in zig de schryvers, geleerden en kunstenaars, uit dien staat geboortig, met bygevoegd levensverhaal der voornaamsten onder dezelve, Middelburg 1734, p. 323; J. van Gool, De nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen: Waer in de levens- en kunstbedryven er tans levende en reets overleedene schilders, die van Houbraken, noch eenig ander schryver, zyn aengeteekend, verhaelt worden, I, The Hague 1750, pp. 43-44; J. Immerzeel Jr, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van het begin der vijftiende eeuw tot heden, I, Amsterdam 1842, p. 226; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, I, Amsterdam 1857, p. 447; A. Bredius, ‘De gildeboeken van St. Lucas te Middelburg’, in 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.], VI, Rotterdam 1884-87, pp. 106-264, esp. pp. 186, 191-93, 197, 198, 202, 205, 208, 209; P. Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, ‘De schuttersstukken uit Goes’, in ibid., VII, 1888-90, pp. 166-83, esp. pp. 180-83; Moes and Lilienfeld in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XI, Leipzig 1915, p. 111; A.W.E. Dek, ‘Het geslacht Eversdijk uit Goes’, Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 27 (1973), pp. 272-93, esp. p. 292; F. van der Ploeg and C.E. Zonnevylle-Heyning, ‘Brave koppen en gladde aengesigten’: De Goese schutters en hun schilders: C.W. Eversdijck, W.C. Eversdijck en P. Peuteman, Middelburg 1999, pp. 111-20; Römer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXXV, Munich/Leipzig 2003, p. 423

Entry

The inscriptions on the stone niches of this portrait and its pendant (SK-A-994) of 1666 identify the sitters as Nicolaes Blanckaert and his wife Maria Eversdijck.⁴ Blanckaert, who was born in Leiden, was teaching philosophy and history at the Illustere School of Middelburg around the middle of the century. On 2 February 1650 he married Maria Eversdijck, a burgomaster’s daughter, in the nearby town of Goes.⁵ In 1655 Blanckaert occupied the post of historiographer of Zeeland. In 1664 he changed course by graduating as a physician in Harderwijk before becoming a doctor in Heerenveen two years later. In 1669 he was appointed professor of Greek and literature at Franeker University. Blanckaert held several other positions in Friesland, among them privy counsellor and court physician to Princess Albertina Agnes and tutor to her son, the future stadholder Hendrik Casimir II.⁶

Willem Eversdijck received the commission to paint the couple through his family network, for he and Maria Eversdijck were grand-nephew and grand-niece.⁷ He fittingly portrayed Nicolaes Blanckaert as an antique classical bust in a stone niche, on which he inscribed the sitter’s motto, ‘Incertum quo fata trahunt’ (It is uncertain where Fate will take us),⁸ along with his age and Latinized name.⁹ His wife is depicted with the maxim ‘Dominus providebit’ (The Lord will provide) and her age.¹⁰

These pendants have a remarkable provenance. The last owner’s mother was an Eversdijck,¹¹ which suggests that the paintings passed by descent for over two ages, but actually they were auctioned in 1862.¹² However, the fact that these companion pieces were then offered for sale with nine other portraits from the same family, including those of Nicolaes Blanckaert’s son Stephanus and the latter’s parents-in-law,¹³ makes it very likely that the group stayed in the family for a long time. Sara Isabella Geertruid Blankaart, a descendant of Nicolaes Blanckaert,¹⁴ died childless in Utrecht in 1844. Maybe the pictures remained with her until then and were bought by a relative in the 1862 auction.¹⁵

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

For both the present painting (SK-A-993) and its pendant (SK-A-994)
R.E.O. Ekkart, Franeker professorenportretten: Iconografie van de professoren aan de Academie en het Rijksathenaeum te Franeker, 1585-1843, Franeker 1977, pp. 193-94, no. 184 (only SK-A-993); F. van der Ploeg and C.E. Zonnevylle-Heyning, ‘Brave koppen en gladde aengesigten’: De Goese schutters en hun schilders: C.W. Eversdijck, W.C. Eversdijck en P. Peuteman, Middelburg 1999, pp. 116-17, 137, nos. WE7, WE8

Collection catalogues

For both the present painting (SK-A-993) and its pendant (SK-A-994)
1887, p. 44, nos. 354, 355; 1903, pp. 97-98, nos. 915, 916; 1934, p. 97, nos. 915, 916; 1976, pp. 222-23, nos. A 993, A 994

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Willem Eversdijck, Portrait of Nicolaes Blanckaert (1624-1703), c. 1666', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7092

(accessed 25 November 2024 22:38:01).