Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 0.7 cm thick on the left and approx. 1.2 cm on the right. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1625. The panel could have been ready for use by 1636, but a date in or after 1642 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends over the edges of the support. The first, beige-grey layer consists of white pigment particles varying in size, with an addition of black, orange and earth pigment particles. The second, light brown ground contains earth pigments and some white and fine orange pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared photography and infrared reflectography revealed some thin lines in what appears to be a dry medium, indicating the folds of the sitter’s doublet and delineating the windowsill and the shadow falling across it.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support. The translucent brown initial lay-in has remained visible, for instance in the sleeve. The composition was built up from dark to light leaving the sitter and curtain mostly in reserve. The face has been worked up from dark to light on a grey undermodelling. Infrared reflectography revealed some changes to the hands, suggesting that the right one was initially not visible, being placed behind the windowsill, while the left first held the print at the right edge. The print was executed with a thin brush and dark brown-grey paint over a lighter grey; fine, bright orange-red brushstrokes were added to its edges in the final stage. The window frame was applied wet in wet with different shades of grey and brown. The paint surface is smooth throughout.
Anna Krekeler, 2022

Fair. The varnish is extremely thick, has yellowed severely and saturates poorly, especially in the dark areas. Two scratches are visible to the right of the head. Parts of the background display a greyish haze.

…; donated by the dealer Franz Kleinberger, Paris, through the mediation of the Director of the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, The Hague, to the museum, as Dutch School, mid-17th century, Portrait of a Painter, January 1896¹¹NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 176, no. 13 (18 January 1896); NHA, ARS, Kop., inv. 290, p. 175, no. 1361 (23 January 1896).

Object number: SK-A-1638

Credit line: Gift of F. Kleinberger, Paris

This small panel shows a man looking out of a stone window embrasure who holds a print of Neptune and Amphitrite.³³It has not been possible to identify the print. For stylistic similarities to the school of Rubens see F.G. Meijer, ‘Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt, een kennismaking’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 256-69, esp. pp. 268-69, note 34. Behind him is an easel. The composition with the arched window is a typical device of Leiden artists,⁴⁴Scenes of this kind were popularized by Gerrit Dou, see for example A Man Smoking a Pipe at a Window in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-86). but until recently there was no information on who depicted the figure.⁵⁵Karel Slabbaert is proposed as a possible candidate on the Rijksmuseum inventory card, where the portrait is described as being painted in the manner of Gerrit Dou.

In 1990 Meijer succeeded in attributing this and other paintings to the Leiden-born Pieter van Egmondt, who had only been known shortly prior to that by the mentions in old inventories and auction catalogues.⁶⁶F.G. Meijer, ‘Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt, een kennismaking’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 256-69, esp. p. 262. Van Egmondt’s signature was spotted on two pictures, one of which is closely related to the Rijksmuseum work.⁷⁷With the dealer J. van Haeften, London, in 1990; illustrated in F.G. Meijer, ‘Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt, een kennismaking’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 256-69, esp. p. 260, fig. 3. In addition, Meijer found several comparable compositions, all of them with a man posing in a window, either with musical instruments or painter’s attributes.⁸⁸Two such works, present whereabouts unknown, are illustrated in F.G. Meijer, ‘Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt, een kennismaking’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 256-69, esp. p. 260, fig. 4, and p. 261, fig. 5. The fact that all of them show the same figure, with his narrow chin and downy little moustache, makes it likely that he is the artist himself.⁹⁹F.G. Meijer, ‘Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt, een kennismaking’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 256-69, esp. p. 263.

None of the paintings currently attributed to Van Egmondt bear the year of execution.¹⁰¹⁰The date of 1655 on a picture of a scholar in his study is reported with a question mark in the catalogue of sale, London (Sotheby’s), 18 October 1989, no. 10; F.G. Meijer, ‘Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt, een kennismaking’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 256-69, esp. p. 268, note 24 (ill. on p. 259). The dendrochronology of the Rijksmuseum panel indicates that it was most probably ready for use by 1642. Compared to similar pictures from his hand, it is a relatively simple scene in which the illusionistic potential of the window is barely explored at all, which suggests that it is an early venture into the genre. Some clue to the dating is provided by the oeuvre of Gerrit Dou, whose compositions seem to have inspired Van Egmondt’s. The present work is most closely related to Dou’s Man Smoking a Pipe at a Window in the Rijksmuseum,¹¹¹¹See SK-A-86. which includes a similar stone embrasure and an easel in the background. Since this is generally assigned to shortly after the middle of the seventeenth century it argues for placing Van Egmondt’s picture around then as well.¹²¹²Meijer dates it around 1655 in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXXII, Munich/Leipzig 2002, p. 380. Earlier on he placed it around 1640; see F.G. Meijer, ‘Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt, een kennismaking’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 256-69, esp. p. 265.

It is not clear whether Van Egmondt’s paintings of this type should be regarded as self-portraits or whether he recorded his features so often because he did not have any other model. It is equally puzzling why he is holding the framed print mounted on rollers here so pointedly and as his own attribute. The added red threads on the left and right edges indicate that is on a textile support, probably silk or satin.¹³¹³It is because most framing elements of this kind have been lost that paintings like this one are valuable sources for our knowledge of how prints were hung up. On this see J. van der Waals, Prenten in de Gouden Eeuw: Van kunst tot kastpapier, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 2006, pp. 22-49. It is a tempting but unfortunately unprovable idea that the artist, who came from a family of silk merchants, had something to do with the manufacture or sale of prints on fabric.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

F.G. Meijer, ‘Pieter Cornelisz. van Egmondt, een kennismaking’, Oud Holland 104 (1990), pp. 256-69, esp. pp. 262, 263, 265

1903, p. 26, no. 300 (as Dutch School, Portrait of a Painter); 1976, pp. 664-65, A 1638 (as Northern Netherlandish school c. 1655, Portrait of a Painter); 1992, p. 48, no. A 1638 (as Portrait of a Painter)

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'attributed to Pieter van Egmondt, Self-Portrait, c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025883