Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste (1603/04-40)

1635

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 121.9 cm × width 91.5 cm
outer size: depth 9.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

inscription and date, upper left: ÆTAT SVÆ 31 / ANº 1635

Technical notes

The support is a fine plain-weave canvas with an average of 18.5 horizontal threads by 19 vertical threads per centimetre which has been lined. The remains of a selvedge are present on the right side. The top, right and bottom edges show original stretching edges and shallow cusping. There are three priming layers painted wet in wet and consisting of lead white, umber, and a very small amount of red ochre in the third layer. The two upper corners have been overpainted. The background was painted first, reserving the figure. There is a thin, black, dead colouring under the costume. The collar was reserved, as were the hands, however the gloves were painted over the costume. Black paint visible under part of the hands indicates a change after the costume was fully painted. The contours of both shoulders were adjusted at a late stage in the execution. A thin wash of grey and brown underpaint was used to model the face, with dark brown for the contours of the eyes and dark red for the parted mouth. The highlights were added wet in wet modelling the lit face in white and pink, and an opaque olive green was added to accent the shadow on the face. The black hair was painted wet in wet with the face. A rich, dark brown layer covering the hair was added last, as were the black pupils.

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: C. Groen, ICN, 1989
X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1613 (1-15), 8 May 1990
infrared reflectography: J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer, RKD, 26 June 1990
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 14 February 2007

Literature scientific examination and reports

Groen/Hendriks 1989, pp. 112-13, 115, 116, 117, 120, 124, no. 105; Hendriks et al. 1990, pp. 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 17, 22-23, 28, 33, 39, 40, 46, 51-52

Condition

Fair. There is some abrasion and the varnish is very discoloured in places.

Provenance

Commissioned by or for the sitters; by descent to Pieter de Clercq (1849-1934) and his sister Maria de Clercq-van Eeghen (1844-1907); by whom donated to the City of Amsterdam, 1891; on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since May 1891

Object number: SK-C-557

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam

The artist

Frans Hals (Antwerp c. 1582/83 - Haarlem 1666)

Frans Hals was born in Antwerp, probably in 1582 or 1583, as the eldest son of Franchois Fransz Hals, a cloth dresser from Mechelen, and his second wife, Adriana van Geertenryck. He emigrated with his family to Haarlem sometime between the end of 1585 and July 1586. The earliest documentation of the family’s presence in Haarlem is the 19 March 1591 baptism of Frans’s younger brother Dirck into the Reformed Church there. Hals joined the Guild of St Luke in 1610, when he was about 28 years old. In 1644, he was appointed warden of the guild for one year. Nothing is known about his career before 1610, except that he might have been apprenticed to Karel van Mander. This information is supplied by the older artist’s anonymous biographer in the introduction to the second edition of the Schilder-boeck. Van Mander himself says nothing to this effect in the first edition, however. The hypothetical apprenticeship would have taken place before 1603, when Van Mander left Haarlem. Hals served as a musketeer in the St George Civic Guard from 1612 to 1624, and in 1616 he was listed as a friend (‘beminnaer’) of the Haarlem chamber of rhetoric, De Wijngaardranken.

Hals’s first marriage to Anneke Harmensdr was shortlived. They married around 1610 and Anneke died in 1615. In 1617, Hals posted the banns for his second marriage, to Lysbeth Reyniersdr (1593-1675). In the meantime, he had visited Antwerp for several months in 1616. His son Harmen (1611-69) from his first marriage and four of his seven sons from his second marriage, Frans the Younger (1618-69), Reynier (1627-72), Claes (1628-86) and Jan (c. 1620-54), also became painters. Hals was probably responsible for their training. According to Houbraken, he was also the teacher of Adriaen Brouwer (c. 1605/06-38) and Adriaen van Ostade (1610-85), and De Bie mentions Philips Wouwerman (1619-68) as a pupil. In 1635, Judith Leyster (1609-60), who had most likely been a pupil of Hals herself, accused him of luring away her pupil Willem Woutersen (dates unknown). None of Hals’s pupils were recorded as such by the guild.

Hals’s earliest dated painting, the Portrait of Jacobus Hendricksz Zaffius, is known from a copy dated 1611 and an engraving by Jan van de Velde II, dated 1630.¹ His last dated works are from 1650, although he was certainly active after that year. The majority of his paintings are portraits of individuals, couples shown in pendants, and groups, both families and municipal bodies. Hals received several commissions for official group portraits, most notably for five militia pieces for the headquarters of the Haarlem St George civic guard and the arquebusiers’ civic guard executed between 1616 and 1639. In 1633, he was commissioned by the officers and guardsmen of the XIth District in Amsterdam to paint their portrait (SK-C-374). Hals, however, never completed the commission. In 1641, he portrayed the regents of the St Elisabeth’s Hospital as a pendant to Johannes Verspronck’s portrait of the regentesses.² At the end of his career, Hals painted the regents and regentesses of the Haarlem Old Men’s Home.³ In addition to portraits, Hals painted several genre scenes, the subjects of which can sometimes be related to the chamber of rhetoric. The influence of the Utrecht Caravaggisti is apparent in the style and often the choice of subject matter of his genre scenes. Apart from supposed scenes of the Prodigal Son, Hals’s only known biblical paintings are a series of the four evangelists from around 1625.⁴ In addition to selling his own works, Hals occasionally sold those of other artists, cleaned and restored paintings, and made valuations.

Hals was in debt during most of his career, and in the last few years of his life could no longer make ends meet. In 1661, he was exempted from paying his annual guild dues on account of his age. In 1662, he received a subsidy from the town, and two years later was awarded a life pension of 200 guilders annually, three cartloads of peat and his rent was paid for him. Hals died in 1666 and was buried in the choir of St Bavokerk. In his own lifetime, he was eulogized by Samuel Ampzing and Theodorus Schrevelius, both of whom Hals immortalized in paint.⁵

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Van Mander 1618, fol. Siiir; Ampzing 1621, unpag.; Ampzing 1628, p. 371; Schrevelius 1648, p. 289; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 90-95; Van der Willigen 1866, pp. 116-23; Bredius 1913b; Bredius 1914; Bredius 1917; Bredius VI, 1919, p. 2216; Bredius 1921; Bredius VII, 1921, p. 281; Hofstede de Groot in Thieme/Becker XV, 1922, pp. 531-34; Bredius 1923a; Van Roey 1957; Van Hees 1959; Van Roey 1972, pp. 148-51; Van Thiel-Stroman 1989 (documents); Van Thiel-Stroman in Haarlem-Worcester 1993, pp. 234-35; Worm in Turner 1996, XIV, pp. 91-96; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 178-84

Entry

The life-size, three-quarter length figures dressed in black in this pendant pair give a monumental impression. The portraits were donated to the City of Amsterdam in 1891 by Pieter de Clercq and his sister Maria de Clercq-van Eeghen as portraits of their ancestors Lucas de Clercq (c. 1593-1652) (SK-C-556) and Feyntje van Steenkiste (1603/04-40) (shown here). These traditional identifications are supported by the probable line of inheritance as well as by a later portrait of Lucas de Clercq with his second wife, Adriaentgen Keyser, and their children attributed to Pieter de Grebber.⁶ Lucas de Clercq was a Haarlem merchant in potash, linen yarn and bleached linens. In 1626, he married Feyntje van Steenkiste, whose father, also dealt in potash. In 1629, Lucas de Clercq went into business with his brother-in-law, Pieter van Steenkiste, and after his death in 1634 he formed a trading company with the husbands of his wife’s sisters. During their marriage, which ended with Feyntje’s death in 1640, the couple prospered and owned a country estate in Overveen, called Clercq en Beeck, together with their brother-in-law, Lucas van Beeck.⁷

Lucas de Clercq and Feyntje van Steenkiste were Mennonites. Lucas’s father, Jacques de Clercq, had been banished from Ghent in 1585 for participating in a conspiracy to overthrow the Roman Catholic municipal government and replace it with one that would protect local Mennonites. The couple’s Mennonite beliefs are apparent in the simplicity of their plain black clothing in Hals’s portraits, which forms a striking contrast to the lavishly adorned costumes worn by non-Mennonite sitters in the same period, such as Tieleman Roosterman and Catherina Brugman in their 1634 portraits by Hals.⁸ Lucas de Clercq’s clothing lacks the ribbons and large white lace cuffs of Tieleman Roosterman’s costume. Nor does Feyntje van Steenkiste wear a richly embroidered stomacher and lace neerstik under her millstone ruff as Catherina Brugman does. Instead of the expensive lace cuffs worn by non-Mennonite women, Feyntje’s are of modest proportion and trimmed with a narrow border of lace.

It has sometimes been speculated in the literature that Lucas de Clercq had a defective right arm and that he has it in a sling in Hals’s portrait.⁹ This, however, is not the case. Numerous male sitters were portrayed in the 17th century by Hals and other portraitists with one of their arms wrapped in a black cape, a common garment accessory of the time.¹⁰

Some scholars have argued that the portrait of Lucas de Clercq was painted almost a decade before that of Feyntje van Steenkiste,¹¹ while others have questioned the attribution of one or both paintings to Hals.¹² Especially tenacious have been the attempts to attribute Feyntje’s portrait to Judith Leyster.¹³ Lucas’s costume, however, leaves little doubt that it was painted around the same time as Feyntje’s portrait, that is c. 1635. While there is nothing in Judith Leyster’s oeuvre that approaches the quality of this pendant pair, stylistically and from a technical point of view they are consistent with Hals’s work from the mid-1630s.¹⁴ Technical examination of the pair did reveal, however, that the canvases have different weave densities and that the ground-layers are different in both works.¹⁵ Whereas Lucas’s portrait is painted on a fairly rough canvas, that used for Feyntje’s portrait is finely woven. The ground in Lucas’s portrait consists of two layers. That in Feyntje’s portrait has three layers with red ochre added in the top layer.¹⁶ While the fact that canvas supports that came from one and the same bolt and have matching grounds can be used as an argument that two paintings form a pair, it is not possible to argue the opposite when this is not the case, as there can be any number of reasons why disparate supports and grounds were used. For the sake of convenience or, perhaps, to save money on materials, Hals may simply have used two, already primed canvases of similar dimensions that he had on hand in his studio.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 109.

Literature

Moes I, 1897, p. 179, no. 1563, II, 1905, p. 419, no. 7550; Moes 1909, p. 101, nos. 24, 25; Hofstede de Groot 1910, p. 51, nos. 165, 166; Six 1916, pp. 92-93, 96 (Portrait of Lucas de Clercq as Hals ? and Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste as Judith Leyster); Trivas 1941, p. 31, no. 22, p. 44, no. 58; Slive I, 1970, p. 116, III, 1974, pp. 58-59, nos. 104, 105; Grimm 1972, pp. 80, 148, 200, no. 31 (Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste as Judith Leyster); Grimm 1989, pp. 238, 274, no. 45 (Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste as Judith Leyster); Hofrichter 1989, pp. 78-79, nos. D14, D15; Slive in Washington etc. 1989, pp. 264-65, nos. 46, 47

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 116, nos. 1086, 1087; 1934, p. 118, nos. 1086, 1087; 1960, p. 121, nos. 1086, 1087; 1976, p. 256, nos. C 556, C 557; 2007, no. 109

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Frans Hals, Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste (1603/04-40), 1635', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8611

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