Pharaoh’s Daughter Discovers Moses in the Rush Basket (Exodus 2:5-6)

The support is a plain-weave canvas that has been lined. Because of the discoloured varnish, any possible cusping cannot be detected. Nor is it possible to determine the colour of the ground layer or layers. The paint was finely applied with minimal brushmarking.

Fair. There are some small paint losses on the right side of the canvas and on the back of the female figure on the right. The figures are abraded, and there are a number of discoloured overpaints in the sky and the backs of the two foreground figures and the figure holding the infant Moses. The varnish has discoloured considerably and is uneven.

? Commissioned by or for Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), Plein, The Hague; ? his son, Constantijn Huygens II (1628-97), with the house on Plein, The Hague;¹¹Leerintveld 1988, p. 100. ? his son, Constantijn Huygens III (1674-1704), with the house on Plein, The Hague;²²Leerintveld 1988, p. 101. ? his mother, Susanna Rijckaert (1642-1712), with the house on Plein, The Hague;³³Leerintveld 1988, p. 101. ? her sister-in-law, Susanna Huygens (1637-1725), with the house on Plein, The Hague;⁴⁴Leerintveld 1988, p. 101. ? her daughter, Philippina Doublet (1672-1746), with the house on Plein, The Hague;⁵⁵Leerintveld 1988, p. 101. ? her daughter, Susanna Louisa Huygens (1714-85), with the house on Plein, The Hague;⁶⁶Leerintveld 1988, p. 103. ? her estate inventory, The Hague, 31 March 1786 (‘De vinding van Moses’);⁷⁷GAH, NA 3520, notary Lambertus Sijthoff, no. 72; see also Van der Veen 1993, pp. 156-58. ? purchased by Jacob Verheije van Citters (1675-1739), with the house on Plein, 12 February 1787;⁸⁸Leerintveld 1988, p. 106. purchased by Jonkheer Johannes Goldberg (1763-1828), with the house on Plein, The Hague, 15 April 1800;⁹⁹Van der Haagen 1928, p. 37. description of his house on Plein, The Hague, 1827, as an overdoor by [Jacob van] Spreeuwen;¹⁰¹⁰Transcribed in Van der Muelen 1889, p. 76. purchased by the State, with the house on Plein, The Hague, 5 January 1829;¹¹¹¹Van der Muelen 1889, p. 72. transferred to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 116), 1874; transferred to the museum, as J.G. van Bronckhorst, February 1885

ObjectNumber: SK-A-852

The landscape in this painting has been convincingly attributed to the Haarlem artist Cornelis Vroom by both Keyes and Biesboer.²⁰²⁰Keyes 1975, II, p. 174, no. P 1; Biesboer 1979, p. 108. Keyes compared the lighting to that in Vroom’s 1630 River Panorama in Schwerin (fig. a) and the trees to those in a drawing in Hamburg,²¹²¹Kunsthalle; illustrated in Keyes 1975, II, fig. 80. and the 1638 Landscape with Waterfall, now in Haarlem (fig. b).²²²²Illustrated in Keyes 1975, II, fig. 47. The rendering of the rock-faced riverbank and distant hill in the Haarlem painting is also very similar to that in the Rijksmuseum picture. Collaborative evidence is the fact that Vroom is documented as having painted the landscape in Bor’s no longer extant Triumph of Venus, part of the decorations carried out for Frederik Hendrik’s Honselaarsdijk palace between 1636 and 1638.²³²³See Buvelot 1995b, p. 122. Vroom was also responsible for the landscape in a painting in Stockholm,²⁴²⁴Nationalmuseum; illustrated in Stockholm 1992, p. 115. the figures in which have on occasion been attributed to Bor.²⁵²⁵Nicolson 1979, p. 24; Nicolson/Vertova 1990, I, p. 66; Cavalli-Björkman in Stockholm 1992, pp. 114-15, no. 6; Buvelot 1995a, p. 59. The Stockholm painting is, however, possibly the one mentioned in a number of 17th-century Haarlem inventories as a collaboration between Vroom and Jacob van Campen.²⁶²⁶See Buvelot 1995a, p. 117, nos. XXVII and XXIX; the figures in it have been attributed to Van Campen by Snoep (1969, p. 288, note 36), Keyes (1975, II, p. 193, no. P 37), Slatkes (1981, pp. 175-76), and Van den Brink (in Utrecht-Frankfurt 1993, p. 134).

The ultimate source for the composition of the landscape, which is blocked off on the left by trees and has a distant panoramic view, is Adam Elsheimer’s Aurora.²⁷²⁷Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; illustrated in Andrews 1977, pl. 66; see also Biesboer 1979, p. 110. However, Pieter de Grebber’s 1634 Finding of Moses.²⁸²⁸Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in Rotterdam-Frankfurt 1999, p. 129. was probably the immediate model for the diagonal figural composition set against a screen of trees. De Grebber’s painting might also have inspired Bor’s combination of light blue and gold in the drapery worn by Pharaoh’s daughter. But unlike this potential model, she merely looks on in the present painting as her maids occupy themselves with the infant Moses. This approach to the subject, as well as the two maids with their naked backs to the viewer, were possibly derived from Moyses van Wtenbrouck’s handling of the subject (SK-A-4673). The women in Bor’s painting, with their fat cheeks and neckless bodies, all appear to be cast from the same mould. This bizarre figure type owes as much to Wtenbrouck as it does to Van Campen and De Grebber.

There is a possibility that Pharaoh’s Daughter Discovers Moses was originally owned by Constantijn Huygens and hung in his house on Plein in The Hague. A 1786 inventory of the contents of this house made after the death of Huygens’s great-granddaughter, Susanna Louisa Huygens (1714-85), includes a painting with this title, although unfortunately the names of the artists who executed it are not recorded. The painting had presumably remained in the house, which was passed down to Constantijn Huygens’s descendants in a quite convoluted manner.²⁹²⁹See Provenance. After the death of Susanna Louisa Huygens, the painting was, again presumably, sold with the house on Plein to Jacob Verheije van Citters and subsequently, in 1800, to Jonkheer Johannes Goldberg (1763-1828). An 1827 description of the house, in Goldberg’s possession at the time, mentions a Finding of Moses as an overdoor by Van Spreeuwen. The year after Goldberg’s death, the house was sold to the State. The painting was transferred to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst in The Hague three years before Huygens’s house on Plein was demolished in 1877.

Significantly, the possible original owner of the painting, Constantijn Huygens, and the artists who executed it, Bor and Vroom, were involved in the Honselaarsdijk project, as were Van Campen and De Grebber, who were so influential for Bor.³⁰³⁰See Buvelot 1995b, pp. 121-28. The years 1636-38, when that project was undertaken, give an indication for dating Bor’s painting. In his overview of Bor’s oeuvre, Von Moltke placed the painting at the end of the 1630s.³¹³¹Van Moltke 1977, p. 148. Biesboer used the date of the completion of Huygens’s own house, 1637, as the probable date.³²³²Biesboer 1979, p. 108. Although his reasoning is difficult to follow, Keyes’s suggested date of about 1630 seems to be based on the date of Vroom’s landscape in Schwerin.³³³³Keyes 1975, II, p. 172, no. P 1. However, Vroom’s Landscape with Waterfall in Haarlem, which has more in common with the Rijksmuseum painting, is from 1638. Bor’s four dated paintings also provide little indication as to how this collaborative work can be situated chronologically. The fully evolved classicism of the Pretiose, Don Juan and the Gypsy Woman Maiombe of 1641,³⁴³⁴Utrecht, Centraal Museum; coll. cat. Utrecht 1999, II, p. 720, no. 100 (ill.). does, at least, provide a terminus ante quem. Another indication is provided by the similarity between the long-haired figures and Bor’s single-figure depictions of women. These paintings are not dated, but it is known that Bor donated one of them to the Sint-Jobsgasthuis in Utrecht in 1631.³⁵³⁵For these paintings and this dating of them see Jansen in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1986, pp. 228-31, no. 48. However, because De Grebber’s Finding of Moses seems to have been one of Bor’s models, its date of 1634 can serve as a terminus post quem.

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. 25.

Lunsingh Scheurleer 1962, p. 182; Keyes 1975, II, p. 172, no. P 1; Von Moltke 1977, pp. 148, 149, 158, no. 2, with earlier literature; Biesboer 1979, p. 108; Nicolson 1979, p. 24; Nicolson/Vertova 1990, I, p. 66; Huiskamp in Amsterdam 1991b, pp. 231-32, no. 17; Van der Veen 1993, pp. 156-57

1903, p. 57, no. 567; 1934, p. 55, no. 567; 1960, p. 47, no. 567; 1976, p. 129, no. A 852; 2007, no. 25

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Paulus Bor and Cornelis Hendriksz. Vroom, Pharaoh’s Daughter Discovers Moses in the Rush Basket (Exodus 2:5-6), c. 1635 - c. 1638', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6139