Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy

Portrait of Maria Joachimsdr Swartenhont (1598-1631)

1627

Inscriptions

  • inscription and date, top right:Æta. 27. / 1627.
  • label, on the reverse:Maria Swartenhont, dochter van J.A. Swartenhont, moeder van Maria Reij, hoort nu M[...] Meulenaar samen toe, 1704(Maria Swartenhont, daughter of J.A. Swartenhont, mother of Maria Reij, now belongs jointly to M[...] Meulenaar, 1704)

Technical notes

The oval panel consists of three vertically grained oak planks and is bevelled all round. The ground is white. The paint layers were thinly applied over careful undermodelling, yielding smooth transitions between shadows and highlights. Only the lightest highlights and the pattern in the gown were applied with thicker, impasted paint. A pentimento by the sitter’s right forefinger indicates an earlier placement closer to the tip of the thumb. The sitter’s grip on the glove was somewhat relaxed by this alteration.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 11 mei 2005

Condition

Fair. There are two cracks and an open joint. The varnish is discoloured.

Conservation

  • conservator unknown, 1919: revarnished

Provenance

? Commissioned by or for the sitters; ? their daughter, Maria Rey (c. 1631-1703), Amsterdam; ? her eldest son, Hendrick Meulenaer (1650-1704), Amsterdam; ? his daughter, Maria Meulenaer (1678-1743), Amsterdam; ? her husband, Pieter Schout Muilman (1672-1757), Amsterdam; ? his son, Dionis Muilman (1702-72), Amsterdam; ? his younger brother, Nicolaas Muilman (1709-90), Amsterdam; ? his eldest son, Henric Muilman (1743-1812), Amsterdam; ? his son, Willem Ferdinand Mogge Muilman (1778-1849), Amsterdam; ? his wife, Magdalena Antonia Muilman (1788-1853), Amsterdam; ? her daughter, Anna Maria van de Poll-Mogge Muilman (1811-78), Amsterdam; her stepson, Jacobus Salomon Hendrik van de Poll (1837-80), Amsterdam; by whom bequeathed to the museum, 18801RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 162, no. 367 (21 June 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 288, no. 36 (26 June 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 288, no. 37 (29 June 1880); RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 162, no. 370 (30 June 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 289, no. 39 (3 July 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 289, no. 41 (9 July 1880); RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 162, no. 371 (15 July 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 291, no. 50 (10 August 1880). Provenance reconstructed by Cornelis van der Bas, 2003.

ObjectNumber: SK-A-699

Credit line: Jonkheer J.S.H. van de Poll Bequest, Amsterdam

The artist

Biography

Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy (Amsterdam 1588 - Amsterdam 1650/56)

Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy was born in Amsterdam in 1588 as the eldest son of the armorial stonemason Elias Claesz Pickenoy and his wife Heijltje Laurens s’Jonge, both of whom were born in Antwerp. In 1621 the painter married Levina Bouwens. In 1629 and 1634 Pickenoy was warden of the Guild of St Luke. He died between May 1650 and October 1656. Pickenoy was a successful artist, with an oeuvre numbering dozens of individual portraits, as well as groups of regents and civic guardsmen. A very different part of his output consists of several paintings of mythological and religious subjects, including a Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery.2Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent; illustrated in coll. cat. Utrecht 2003, p. 171.

Stylistic evidence suggests that he was trained by Cornelis van der Voort, the most influential portrait painter in Amsterdam in the 1610s and 20s. Pickenoy’s earliest known work is The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Sebastiaen Egbertsz de Vrij of 1619.3Amsterdams Historisch Museum; illustrated in Amsterdam 1993, p. 595. Despite competition from artists like Rembrandt and Thomas de Keyser, Pickenoy was the leading portraitist in Amsterdam in the 1630s – a position he lost in the 1640s to Bartholomeus van der Helst, who may have been his pupil. In that period, though, he did make a few very large civic guard pieces, among them Officers and Other Civic Guardsmen of the IVth District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Jan Claesz van Vlooswijck and Lieutenant Gerrit Hudde of 1642 (SK-C-1177).

Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007

References
Six 1886, pp. 81-108; Lelienfeld in Thieme/Becker X, 1914, p. 458; Dudok van Heel 1985, pp. 152-60; Ekkart in Amsterdam 1993, p. 313; Briels 1997, p. 368

Entry

The attribution of this pendant pair to Pickenoy is very persuasive. One feature of his style is the relatively soft modelling. Both portraits are dated 1627, when according to the inscriptions Maerten Reijnertsz Rey (1595/96-1632, see SK-A-698) was 32 years old and his wife, Maria Joachimsdr Swartenhont (1598-1631, shown here), 27.

Maerten Rey and Maria Swartenhont married in 1617 and had three daughters.4Frederiks 1887, pp. 272-73. Rey was a wine merchant and steward of the Crossbowmen’s Hall. He is shown halflength turned to the right, and in his right hand he is holding up a rummer of white wine. Quite a few portraits from the early 17th century show men with a glass in the hand, such as Cornelis Ketel’s portrait of the wine-gauger Vincent Jacobsen.5Slive in Washington etc. 1989, p. 215. Ketel’s portrait, which is now lost, is known from an engraving by Jacob Matham; illustrated in Washington etc. 1989, p. 214, fig. 30c. Ketel and Pickenoy were not painting a merry drinker or an allegory of Taste, but a portrait of a man with an attribute of his trade.

What is remarkable is the oval shape of the two portraits. On the back of one of the panels are traces that point to the use of a pair of compasses, which the panel maker may have used to saw a proper oval. However, it is not possible to say for certain whether the shape is original.

Life-size oval portraits were exceptional in the Netherlands in the 1620s, and there are very few of them even in Pickenoy’s oeuvre.6Van Thiel 1983d, p. 154, mentions some early examples, including a Portrait of a 35-Year-old Man of 1616 by Werner van den Valckert; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; illustrated in Van Thiel 1983d, p. 154, fig. 33. It was only in the 1630s that the type became popular, chiefly in Amsterdam, where Rembrandt used it several times.7Bruyn/Van de Wetering 1986, pp. 5-6.

It looks as if Pickenoy made the pose fit the oval shape. The heads of the figures are situated high up in the picture, and much of the bodies are visible. Pickenoy was very successful in imparting liveliness to his sitters. In the man’s portrait that is largely due to the glass of wine he is holding up close to the edge of the picture. The glove that the woman is holding in her portrait is actually cut off by the edge.

The paintings remained with the family for a long time before being bequeathed to the Rijksmuseum at the end of the 19th century.8See Provenance, and the early 18th-century labels on the backs of the paintings.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 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. 234.

Literature

Six 1886, p. 87; Frederiks 1887, pp. 272-73 (as Thomas de Keyser); Kolleman 1971, p. 115

Collection catalogues

1880, p. 484, nos. 185b, 185c (as Thomas de Keyser); 1887, p. 43, nos. 338, 339; 1903, p. 95, nos. 894, 895; 1934, p. 95, nos. 894, 895; 1960, pp. 94-95, nos. 894, 895; 1976, p. 218, nos. A 698, A 699; 2007, no. 234

Citation

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy, Portrait of Maria Joachimsdr Swartenhont (1598-1631), 1627', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6992

(accessed 10 May 2025 23:07:30).

Footnotes

  • 1RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 162, no. 367 (21 June 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 288, no. 36 (26 June 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 288, no. 37 (29 June 1880); RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 162, no. 370 (30 June 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 289, no. 39 (3 July 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 289, no. 41 (9 July 1880); RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 162, no. 371 (15 July 1880); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 39, p. 291, no. 50 (10 August 1880). Provenance reconstructed by Cornelis van der Bas, 2003.
  • 2Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent; illustrated in coll. cat. Utrecht 2003, p. 171.
  • 3Amsterdams Historisch Museum; illustrated in Amsterdam 1993, p. 595.
  • 4Frederiks 1887, pp. 272-73.
  • 5Slive in Washington etc. 1989, p. 215. Ketel’s portrait, which is now lost, is known from an engraving by Jacob Matham; illustrated in Washington etc. 1989, p. 214, fig. 30c.
  • 6Van Thiel 1983d, p. 154, mentions some early examples, including a Portrait of a 35-Year-old Man of 1616 by Werner van den Valckert; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; illustrated in Van Thiel 1983d, p. 154, fig. 33.
  • 7Bruyn/Van de Wetering 1986, pp. 5-6.
  • 8See Provenance, and the early 18th-century labels on the backs of the paintings.