Support The single, vertically grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 1.2 cm thick on the left and approx. 0.5 cm on the right. The reverse is bevelled at the top and bottom and on the right, and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1631. The panel could have been ready for use by 1642, but a date in or after 1648 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of white pigment particles (some of them coarse) with a minute addition of fine brown and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography and infrared photography revealed an extensive underdrawing in a dry medium. Following the principles of one-point perspective, the space with all architectural elements and parts of the furniture was constructed with a grid of ruler-drawn horizontal and diagonal lines. The central vanishing point is located in the scholar’s beard. Loose, scribbled lines define the shapes of the books on the table, the bag hanging on the wall near the window and the scholar’s cloak. The stool in the foreground was planned further to the left than finally painted. The beginnings of a spiral staircase are visible in the top left corner, but it was not executed.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was laid out in translucent browns, leaving the window and figure in reserve. This undermodelling has remained visible throughout, most notably in the transitions between the walls and the ceiling. The face was executed with thin wet-in-wet layers and from dark to light. It was reserved in the black clothes, which were modelled wet in wet with grey paint on top of a black base. Grey scumbling was used for the different shades of the walls and the ceiling. The ceiling beams, the floor and the tomes in the bookcase were further built up with grey and a darker brown. The paint surface is smooth, with small impasted brushstrokes in the highlights. The illuminated pages on the table and the light parts of the window were executed last.
Anna Krekeler, 2023

Fair. The reverse has a vertical crack, approx. 6 cm long, in the lower right corner. The blue of the tablecloth now appears greyish and the dark clothes have white protrusions throughout. The varnish is extremely thick, has yellowed and saturates poorly.

…; ? sale, Catharina Petronilla Josepha de Blondel de Lillers (?-1776), dowager of Baron Ferdinand Philippe Antoine de Boneem (1703-1773), Brussels (F. de Roy), 15 July 1776, no. 19, as Cornelis Bega (‘Un Philosophe avec autres décorations très-bien exécuté par Corneille Bega. B[ois], Haut 15 pouc., larg. 11 pouc. [40.5 x 30 cm].’), fr. 54, to F. de Roy;…; from P.J. Thijs, as Cornelis Bega, fl. 60, to Gerrit van der Pot (1732-1807), Lord of Groeneveld, Rotterdam, 20 September 1799;¹¹Journaal Pot van Groeneveld, 20 September 1799: ‘Een oud man in zijn studeerkamer. Van P.J. Thijs gekogt voor f 60. Een lijst f 8.10. f 68.10’. his sale, Rotterdam (Gebr. Van Ryp), 6 June 1808 sqq., no. 9, as Cornelis Bega (‘Hoog 15¼, en breed 12¾ duim [39 x 32.8 cm]. Pnl. Een Oud Man in eene overdenkende houding, in zijne Studeerkamer zittende, met aangenaam bijwerk. Bevallig verlicht; uitvoerig en krachtig geschilderd.’), fl. 195, to A.A. Stratenus, for the museum²²Provenance reconstructed in T. Zeedijk, ‘‘Tot Voordeel en Genoegen’: De schilderijenverzameling van Gerrit van der Pot van Groenevelt’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 55 (2007), pp. 128-207, esp. p. 169, no. 13.

Object number: SK-A-23

This Scholar in his Study was thought to be a Cornelis Bega from at least 1799, when it was bought by Gerrit van der Pot, until 1887, when the picture was given to Salomon Koninck in the Rijksmuseum’s collection catalogue of that year.⁸⁸A. Bredius, Catalogus van het Rijks-Museum van schilderijen, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1887, p. 95, no. 792. It was not until more than a century later that Sumowski challenged the latter attribution and correctly recognized the painting as a late work by Willem de Poorter.⁹⁹W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, VI, Landau/Pfalz 1994, p. 3740, no. 2425. The setting and the solitary figure’s position are indeed very close to those in another depiction of a scholar which was also convincingly assigned to De Poorter by Sumowski,¹⁰¹⁰Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, VI, Landau/Pfalz 1994, p. 4042, no. 2424. as well as to those in the artist’s signed Man Weighing Gold now in Raleigh.¹¹¹¹North Carolina Museum of Art; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, VI, Landau/Pfalz 1994, p. 2459, no. 1646. The latter panel and the one discussed here have the same rendering and bulkiness of the black cloak, while the figure type, with his large, pointy beak of a nose, appears in other works by De Poorter, such as a signed vanitas allegory.¹²¹²Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, VI, Landau/Pfalz 1994, p. 2452, no. 1639. The Rijksmuseum scene also suffers from the perspective problem endemic to much of De Poorter’s oeuvre. His figures appear either too small, or, as in the present case, too large in relation to the objects surrounding them. In addition, the books and sheets of paper closest to this greybeard are undersized when compared to the open volume lying in front of them, as well as to the tomes on the shelves on the rear wall and the books and globe forming a repoussoir closest to the picture plane. The door in the right background is far too low relative to the room. Finally, the way in which the books droop over each other and the edge of the table, resembling wet rags more than paper, is consistent with the approach in De Poorter’s other Scholar in his Study and Man Weighing Gold. The Rijksmuseum panel probably dates from late in the artist’s oeuvre, when the scale of his figures became larger and his technique looser.

A popular subject in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, the iconography of the scholar in his study is rooted in medieval depictions of St Jerome, one of the four Fathers of the Church, in his cell.¹³¹³See, for example, J. Bialostocki, ‘Books of Wisdom and Books of Vanity’, in In Memoriam J.G. van Gelder 1903-1980, Utrecht 1982, pp. 37-67, esp. p. 48. This origin for the theme is apparent in Rembrandt’s 1642 etching of St Jerome in a Dark Chamber,¹⁴¹⁴Illustrated in S.S. Dickey (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, L, New York 1993, p. 91, no. 105. which has the same design as two pictures of secular scholars produced by his followers.¹⁵¹⁵Both paintings are in Paris, Musée du Louvre. One of them is considered to be from Rembrandt’s circle by J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, II, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster 1986, pp. 638-44, no. C 51 (ill.), but is given to Rembrandt himself by, among others, J. Foucart, Catalogue des peintures flamandes et hollandaises du Musée du Louvre, coll. cat. Paris 2009, p. 213, INV. 1740, where the date is read and accepted as 1632. For the other picture, which is assigned to Salomon Koninck and dated c. 1640-50, see W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, III, Landau/Pfalz 1986, p. 1649, no. 1133, p. 1707 (ill.); J. Foucart, Catalogue des peintures flamandes et hollandaises du Musée du Louvre, coll. cat. Paris 2009, p. 171, INV. 1741 (ill.). A panel dated 1631 of a Scholar in a Vaulted Chamber in Stockholm is considered to be a copy of a lost prototype by Rembrandt himself.¹⁶¹⁶Nationalmuseum; see J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, pp. 548-53, no. C 17 (ill.). A striking motif in Rembrandt’s etching and the two closely related paintings is the spiral staircase, which seems to serve as a metaphor for the complex thought processes of the scholar. Examination with infrared reflectography has revealed that De Poorter – assuming the present work is indeed by him – initially planned such a staircase for his composition as well.¹⁷¹⁷See Technical notes.

Also like Rembrandt’s etching, and a number of other depictions of scholars in their studies, De Poorter’s figure rests his head on his hand. This pose was associated with melancholy, an imbalance in one of the so-called humours that especially affected creative and learned individuals.¹⁸¹⁸R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art, London 1964, pp. 241-74; R. Wittkower and M. Wittkower, Born under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists: A Documented History from Antiquity to the French Revolution, London 1963, pp. 102-07. Among the attributes assigned to this type of person in Cesare Ripa’s influential Iconologia is an open book, because ‘the Melancholic is very inclined to study, and seeks to progress in it, fleeing the company of others’.¹⁹¹⁹The emblem was not in the original 1593 publication, but is included in the second edition (C. Ripa, Iconologia, overo Descrittione dell’imagini universali cavate dall’antichità et da altri luoghi, Rom 1603, pp. 79-80), as well as in the 1644 Dutch translation (C. Ripa, Iconologia, of uytbeeldingen des verstands, trans. D.P. Pers, Amsterdam 1644, p. 77), where the translated passage reads: ‘Het opgeslagen Boeck en de opmerckinge totte studie of leesinge, bediet, dat de Melancolijcke totte studie seer genegen is, en daer in wil voortgaen, vliedende anderer luyden geselschap.’ At the end of the emblem Ripa quotes the description in the medieval Regimen sanitatis Salernitanium, which could just as easily apply to the scholar in De Poorter’s painting: ‘The heavy-hearted person, bowed down with care, full of sighs, full of thought, with downcast eyes, full of sleeplessness, of deliberations, full of envy, full of fright and pain, full of falsehood and full of fear, tends usually to see with a gloomy gaze.’²⁰²⁰C. Ripa, Iconologia, of uytbeeldingen des verstands, trans. D.P. Pers, Amsterdam 1644, p. 77: ‘De swaergedruckte Mensch van sorge neergebogen / Vol suchtens, vol gepeins, met neergeslagen oogen, / Vol waeckens, overleghs, vol nijd, vol schrick en smart, / Vol valscheyt en vol anghst, siet meerendeels nae ’t swart.’ On the iconography of the melancholic scholar see also the entry on Jacob van Spreeuwen’s Scholar in his Study (SK-A-1713). The greybeard’s affliction is communicated in the present work not only by the symbolic pose but also through the monochrome palette and chiaroscuro.

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, VI, Landau/Pfalz 1994, p. 3740, no. 2425

1880, p. 46, no. 21 (as Cornelis Bega); 1887, p. 95, no. 792 (as Salomon Koninck); 1903, p. 151, no. 1375 (as Salomon Koninck); 1934, p. 157, no. 1375 (as Salomon Koninck); 1976, p. 326, no. A 23 (as Salomon Koninck)

Jonathan Bikker, 2023, 'attributed to Willem de Poorter, A Scholar in his Study, c. 1642 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20029305