Support The plain-weave canvas, with an average of approx. 9 horizontal by 8 vertical threads per centimetre, has been lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Cusping at intervals of approx. 13 cm is clearly visible at the top and bottom and on the right. Judging by the fine, local crack pattern the bars of the original strainer were approx. 4 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The single, thick, warm white ground extends entirely over the tacking edges on the left and right, and partially over the top and bottom edges. It contains minimal additions of earth pigment and splinters of charcoal black.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could not be detected with the naked eye, infrared photography or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. For the first lay-in, a thin, translucent dark brown and more opaque earth colours were used. This undermodelling is most evident in the deep shadows and the general tone making up the orange tree, and its loose and sketchy lines are clearly visible to the naked eye in the apron, which has become quite transparent. The composition was built up thinly from dark to light and from translucent to opaque, with loose, evident brushwork. The background consists of two layers, the first leaving the figure in reserve and the second correcting its contours. The flesh tones were finely blended for accurate modelling. The sky was applied on the ground in one layer of white with blue pigment particles. At least one orange prepared in the undermodelling was not used in the final painting.
Gwen Tauber, 2022

Fair. The paint layers have become slightly transparent. They are abraded and have been flattened.

? Commissioned by the Orange family as a gift for Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, the sitter’s uncle and guardian; first recorded in the Royal Palace, Berlin (Royal Collections of Prussia), 1779 (‘Eine kleine Prinzessin auf eine Distel tretend’);¹¹F. Nicolai, Beschreibung der Königlichen Rezidenzstädte Berlin und Potsdam, aller daselbst befindlicher Merkwürdigkeiten und der umliegenden Gegend, II, Berlin 1786, p. 884. See also O. ter Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman (1604-1671): Een Haags portretschilder, diss. Utrecht University 1976, p. 82. probate inventory, Royal Palace, Berlin, 1793, no. 10 (‘[…] junges Mädchen. Ganze Figur. 4⅓ x 3’);²²O. ter Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman (1604-1671): Een Haags portretschilder, diss. Utrecht University 1976, p. 82. inventory of paintings, Royal Collections of Prussia, 1811, no. 4111 (‘Portrait einer Jungen Prinzessin’);³³O. ter Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman (1604-1671): Een Haags portretschilder, diss. Utrecht University 1976, p. 82. recorded in the Royal Palace, Potsdam, 1896 (as Princess Albertine Agnes of Orange-Nassau, wife of Prince Willem Frederik of Nassau-Dietz);⁴⁴A. Bredius and E.W. Moes, ‘Adriaen Hanneman’, Oud Holland 14 (1896), pp. 203-18, p. 211. assigned to the State of Prussia after the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II, 1918;⁵⁵A. Staring, ‘De portretten van den Koning-Stadhouder’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 3 (1950-51), pp. 151-96, p. 162. Royal Palace, Berlin, until c. 1945;⁶⁶O. ter Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman (1604-1671): Een Haags portretschilder, diss. Utrecht University 1976, p. 82.…; or, ? collection Mrs Alexandra Zubkow, née Princess Victoria of Prussia (1866-1929);{R. van Luttervelt, ‘Drie portretten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 5 (1957), pp. 108-13, esp. p. 109. …; from the dealer C. Reinheldt, Berlin, fl. 10,000, to the museum, through the mediation of G. Cramer, The Hague, 12 April 1955

Object number: SK-A-3889

The future was looking grim for the House of Orange when Adriaen Hanneman painted this 1654 portrait of Prince Willem III. The boy had been born on 14 November 1650, eight days after the death of his father Willem II, who had ruled as stadholder. Infuriated by the latter’s dynastic ambitions and the power struggle they had unleashed, the States of Holland seized the opportunity in January 1651 not to appoint a successor. That decision was enshrined in law in 1654 under pressure from England, which was republican at the time, by the adoption of the Act of Seclusion, whereby the Oranges were permanently excluded from the stadholdership of the province of Holland. This made it extremely important for Willem III’s grandmother Amalia van Solms and his mother Mary Stuart to keep the young prince’s existence alive in the minds of influential members of the family by sending them his likeness.⁹⁹A. Staring, ‘De portretten van den Koning-Stadhouder’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 3 (1950-51), pp. 151-96, esp. p. 162; Erkelens in M. Schacht and J. Meiner (eds.), Onder den Oranje Boom: Niederländische Kunst und Kultur im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert an deutschen Fürstenhöfen, exh. cat. Krefeld (Kaiser Wilhelm Museum)/Oranienburg (Schloß Oranienburg)/Apeldoorn (Paleis Het Loo) 1999-2000, II, p. 401. This was for example the case with three known replicas of a portrait historié datable to 1653 from Gerard van Honthorst’s studio, in which he is depicted as Apollo out hunting, as well as a variant of the scene.¹⁰¹⁰J.R. Judson and R.E.O. Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, 1592-1656, Doornspijk 1999, pp. 253-54, no. 325. As in the present painting, Willem III is shown with the blue ribbon of the Order of the Garter, which was conferred on him in 1653 by his uncle Charles II of England, who was living in exile. Here he is holding an orange hanging on a small tree in an ornamental pot in a reference to the House of Orange. The thistles protruding from underneath his skirt also have a heraldic, dynastic connotation, for they are the symbol of the Stuart family to which Willem’s mother belonged.

Starting in the second half of the eighteenth century, the sitter was long regarded as a princess because of the dress, though the flat plumed cap indicates that it is a boy. Bredius and Moes followed suit at first, and saw this as a portrait of Princess Albertine Agnes, who was later to marry Willem Frederik of Nassau-Dietz.¹¹¹¹A. Bredius and E.W. Moes, ‘Adriaen Hanneman’, Oud Holland 14 (1896), pp. 203-18, esp. p. 211; E.W. Moes, Iconographia Batava: Beredeneerde lijst van geschilderde en gebeeldhouwde portretten van Noord-Nederlanders in vorige eeuwen, I, 1897, p. 14, no. 111.7. Moes corrected this error in 1905.¹²¹²E.W. Moes, Iconographia Batava: Beredeneerde lijst van geschilderde en gebeeldhouwde portretten van Noord-Nederlanders in vorige eeuwen, II, 1905, p. 608, no. 9096.3; Aanvullingen en verbeteringen van den catalogus der Oranje-Nassau tentoonstelling (ter gelegenheid van de inhuldiging van Hare Majesteit Koningin Wilhelmina in het Fragmentengebouw van het Rijks-Museum te Amsterdam, 8 September-31 October 1898), Amsterdam 1898, p. 9, no. 486a. The identification is confirmed by an engraving after a design by Arnold Houbraken based on a painting by Jan Jacobsz van Houten.¹³¹³A. Staring, ‘De portretten van den Koning-Stadhouder’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 3 (1950-51), pp. 151-96, esp. p. 162. For the print see F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, IX, Amsterdam 1953, p. 151, no. 3.

The young prince is one of the very few children portrayed by Hanneman.¹⁴¹⁴The only other likeness is of Anna Elysabeth van Limborgh of 1665, The Hague, Kunstmuseum Den Haag; illustrated in O. ter Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman (1604-1671): Een Haags portretschilder, diss. Utrecht University 1976, pl. 80. The composition is related to that of a picture which the artist’s shining light, Anthony van Dyck, made of the youthful Willem II around 1630 (fig. a). Like the Flemish master, Hanneman painted the sitter full-length and wearing a dress, which was standard attire for boys up until the age of 6 or thereabouts. In both cases they are placed in front or to one side of a pilaster or column. Hanneman gave Willem III a slightly more static pose than Van Dyck’s Willem II, whose head is turned more sharply and who is gesturing forward with his right arm, the effect of which is reinforced by the pointed head of the greyhound looking in the opposite direction. In the Rijksmuseum canvas, though, the dog, in excited anticipation of what the prince is going to do next, adds some liveliness to the scene. Compared to the Van Dyck, the brushwork is much smoother, although Hanneman employed the artist’s looser manner, as he also did in his likeness of the Duke of Gloucester from the same period.¹⁵¹⁵Washington, National Gallery of Art; illustrated in O. ter Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman (1604-1671): Een Haags portretschilder, diss. Utrecht University 1976, pl. 7. The dynastic symbol of the orange tree is far more prominent here than in the portrait of Willem II. As outlined above, that was entirely due to the critical situation in which the House of Orange found itself at the time. Until the 1950s there was a variant of the present canvas in the collection of Lady Tempest at Broughton Hall, Skipton (Yorkshire).¹⁶¹⁶R. van Luttervelt, ‘Drie portretten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 5 (1957), pp. 108-13, esp. p. 111, fig. 3.

Richard Harmanni, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

O. ter Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman (1604-1671): Een Haags portretschilder, diss. Utrecht University 1976, p. 82, no. 25, with earlier literature; J.B. Bedaux, The Reality of Symbols: Studies in the Iconology of Netherlandish Art, 1400-1800, The Hague/Maarssen 1990, p. 132; Ekkart in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, pp. 156, 158; Erkelens in M. Schacht and J. Meiner (eds.), Onder den Oranje Boom: Niederländische Kunst und Kultur im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert an deutschen Fürstenhöfen, exh. cat. Krefeld (Kaiser Wilhelm Museum)/Oranienburg (Schloß Oranienburg)/Apeldoorn (Paleis Het Loo) 1999-2000, II, p. 404, no. 14.1; Bedaux in J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, pp. 234-35, no. 62; M. Spliethoff, ‘Bilder von Glück und Unglück: Die Porträtmalerei am Hof des Statthalters in Den Haag 1625-1655’, in R. Alex and I. Pfeifer, Oranienbaum − Huis van Oranje: Wiedererweckung eines anhaltischen Fürstenschlosses: Oranische Bildnisse aus fünf Jahrhunderten, exh. cat. Oranienbaum (Schloss Oranienbaum) 2003, pp. 132-41, esp. pp. 138-39

1976, p. 259, no. A 3889

Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Adriaen Hanneman, Portrait of Willem III (1650-1702), Prince of Orange, as a Child, 1654', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20028003