Portrait of an Elderly Lady of the Haling Family

Entry

The handling of this portrait of an elderly lady is that of a journeyman painter who has not been identified. A similar painting was recorded in a private collection in 1965.³ Without a physical study of that picture any discussion of the status of the present painting must be qualified; but judging from a digital scan of a photograph, it would appear to be of greater merit and defter handling. The coat of arms is depicted suspended and the inscription is more calligraphic and differently disposed. Most probably the museum’s painting is a derivation because its support of oak from the Baltic Polish region would have been available for use from 1630 – some twenty years after 1608, the date in the inscription.

The present portrait was early described and catalogued at the museum as portraying a member of the Van Rijn family, with an as yet unverified ownership by the De Geer family. Identity and provenance were thus confused. The Van Rijns were the first owners of Kasteel Rijnhuizen, near Utrecht, which was acquired by Louis III de Geer (1612-1695, son of the famous Louis II) in 1652. In fact, the owner of the likely prototype, referred to above, was a descendant of the De Geer family who had sold the castle in 1958 to the Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie.⁴ That portrait is recorded as coming from Rijnhuizen. SK-C-506 could have been a duplicate also once at Rijnhuizen, or owned by another branch of the De Geer family (the Van Rijn identification of the sitter was based upon its supposedly coming from this castle).

The coat of arms on the likely prototype has been identified as that of the Haling (or Halinck) family from Liège.⁵ As Van Kretschmar confirmed in a letter of 1977,⁶ the sitter – who was born in 1511 but about whom nothing more is as yet known – is thought to have been a sister or aunt of Isabeau de Haling (?1520-1608), the maternal grandmother of Louis II de Geer (1587-1652).

The De Geers – because Protestants – left Liège in 1595 and soon settled in Dordrecht. It is not known whether the present sitter joined the rest of the family in leaving the Catholic, southern Netherlands for Dordrecht. If she adhered to Catholicism and remained in or around Liège, then the present portrait would indeed be likely to be by a southern Netherlandish hand as Van Thiel proposed.⁷ However, if she settled in Dordrecht with the rest of the De Geer family, the appellation of northern Netherlandish would be more likely.

In support of the latter proposal a portrait of Jeanne de Neille (1560-1641) may be adduced. This is a pendant to a posthumous portrait of her husband, Louis I de Geer de Gaillarmont (1535-1602); both are owned by the Swedish Nationalmuseum but remain in situ at Lövstabruck, near Uppsala, the original seat of the De Geer’s iron works which was purchased from the Swedish crown in 1641 by Louis II de Geer.⁸ The De Neille portrait is dated 1634 and signed by Tieer, that is Hendrik Dethier or de Tieer known to have been active in Dordrecht from 1631.⁹

Ekkart, quoted by Cavalli-Björkman, believed these two portraits to be copies of ones in private collections, of which other versions are also known. Judging from the reproduction, the handling of the De Neille portrait is more accomplished than that of SK-C-506. But there are sufficient stylistic affinities to justify speculation that the latter could be a Dethier associate’s copy or derivation from the 1608 prototype made for a series or group of portrayals of De Geer family members (the number of versions of the De Neille portrait suggests that such series or groups were made for different branches of the family).

But until more is known of the career of Dethier and of the life of the ninety-seven-year-old sitter, it seems best to describe this painting as being simply of the Netherlandish School.

The style of the sitter’s headdress is already found in the work of Pieter Brueghel I (c. 1525-1569). Coincidentally or not, Margaretha de Geer (1583-1672), the sister of Louis II de Geer, holds a handkerchief in a similar way in Rembrandt’s portrait of circa 1661 in the London National Gallery (inv. no. NG1675).

Gregory Martin, 2022