Gerard van Honthorst

Portrait of Willem II (1626-1650), Prince of Orange, and his Wife Mary Stuart (1631-1660)

1647

Inscriptions

  • signature and date, centre left, on the balustrade (G and H ligated):GHonthorst / 1647

Technical notes

The support is a plain-weave canvas that has been lined. Cusping is visible on all four sides. The ground appears to be light coloured. Painted quite smoothly throughout, there are nonetheless more areas of impasto and lively brushwork than in the companion piece, SK-A-873.


Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: L. Sozzani, RMA, 8 juni 2002

Condition

Fair. There are many old retouchings visible, and the varnish has discoloured considerably.


Conservation

  • conservator unknown, 1883 - 1833: canvas lined
  • S. Altmann, 1887: retouched

Provenance

...; estate inventory, Huis ten Bosch, The Hague, 1668, no. 1193 (‘Een schilderije met de contrefeytsels van sijne hoogheyt prince Willem hooglofl memorie ende de princesse royale, insgelijk soo groot als ’t leven en mede gedaen bij Honthorst’);1Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer I, 1974, p. 283. estate inventory, Huis ten Bosch, The Hague, 1707, no. 12 (‘Prince Willem de tweede en sijn gemaelle’);2Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer I, 1974, p. 539. confiscated by the French, 1795; transferred to the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen, The Hague, 1876; transferred to the museum, 1885

ObjectNumber: SK-A-871


The artist

Biography

Gerard van Honthorst (Utrecht 1592 - Utrecht 1656)

Gerard van Honthorst was born in Utrecht on 4 November 1592 into a family of artists. His father, Herman Gerritsz van Honthorst, was a decorative painter and probably his first teacher. According to Von Sandrart and Houbraken, Honthorst trained with Abraham Bloemaert. When exactly he went to Italy is not known; a drawn copy after Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St Peter in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo is dated 1616,3Oslo, National Gallery, Printroom; illustrated in Judson/Ekkart 1999, pl. 395. indicating that he was in Rome by that year. His first documented painting, The Beheading of St John the Baptist, was executed for the Church of Santa Maria della Scala in 1617-18.4Illustrated in Judson/Ekkart 1999, pl. 16. Such Caravaggesque night scenes, which often include artificial sources of illumination, garnered Honthorst the nickname ‘Gherardo delle Notti’ in Italy. Among his Roman patrons were the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, in whose house Honthorst lived, and Cardinal Scipione Borghese.

A few months after his return to Utrecht in 1620, Honthorst married Sophia Coopmans. He joined the Guild of St Luke there and set up his own workshop. Von Sandrart, one of his apprentices in the 1620s, informs us that Honthorst had as many as 25 pupils at a time, from each of whom he received the sizable tuition fee of 100 guilders a year. With the exception of 1627, Honthorst served as dean of the guild between 1625 and 1630. It was also in the mid-1620s that he received his first commission from the court of Frederik Hendrik in The Hague.5Amalia van Solms and her Sister Louise Christina of Solms-Braunfels as Diana and a Hunting Nymph, present whereabouts unknown; see Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 235-36, no. 297. A commission from the British ambassador in The Hague, Sir Dudley Carleton, for Lord Arundel came as early as 16206Aeneas Fleeing from the Sack of Troy, present whereabouts unknown; see Judson/Ekkart 1999, p. 106, no. 89. and eventually led to the invitation from Charles I to work on Banqueting House in Whitehall in 1628.7King Charles I of England and his Wife Queen Henrietta Maria as Apollo and Diana, Hampton Court Palace; illustrated in Judson/Ekkart 1999, pl. 45. Honthorst returned to the United Provinces the same year, but continued to work for the English court in the years to come. In 1630 he became court painter to the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia, Frederick V and Elizabeth, in The Hague. Honthorst also painted numerous portraits of the Stadholder and his wife, Amalia van Solms, and took part in the decoration of, among others, the palaces Honselaarsdijk, Huis ter Nieuburch (1636-39) and Huis ten Bosch (1649-50). In order to accommodate his work in The Hague, he set up a second workshop there in 1637 and joined the guild, serving as dean in 1640. Also in 1637, he became the principal artist to decorate the Banqueting Hall in Kronborg Castle for King Christian IV of Denmark. Honthorst was, perhaps, the most internationally successful Dutch artist of his time. Despite, or possibly as a result of this success, his late style was criticized as ‘stiff ’ and ‘slick’ (‘stijve gladdicheyt’) and he was esteemed a ‘much less great master than themselves’ (‘beaucoup moins grand maistre qu’eux’) by his fellow artists working on the Oranjezaal.8Van Hoogstraeten 1678, p. 234; Braun 1966, p. 57, doc. 87, 1649 letter from Constantijn Huygens to Amalia van Solms. He died on 27 April 1656 and was buried in the Catharijnekerk in Utrecht.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Mancini c. 1620, fol. 86 (Judson/Ekkart 1999, p. 47); Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 22, 102, 172-74; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 149-50; Braun 1966, pp. 7-59, 340-88 (documents); Bok in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1986, pp. 276-79; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 382-83; Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. XXXIII-XXXIV, 1-24


Entry

Willem II was the eldest child and only son of Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms. He became stadholder upon the death of his father in 1647. Mary Stuart was the eldest daughter of Charles I of England. As in Van Dyck’s 1641 wedding portrait of the couple (SK-A-102), the traditional sinister/dexter relationship has been reversed. As the daughter of a king, Mary Stuart’s status was higher than that of Willem II, a mere prince.9De Jongh in Haarlem 1986, p. 152. Nonetheless, the placement of the sitters served well the symmetry of the west wall of the large west cabinet of Huis ten Bosch, where the painting hung together with the portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm and Louise Henriette. Mary is the only female figure in the ensemble, which also included SK-A-874, to be given her own putti, which further emphasizes her status. Willem II’s authoritative pose is similar to that of his father in SK-A-874, and, also like Frederik Hendrik, he wears a suit of armour and carries a baton. This is an obvious reference to Willem II succeeding his father as commander-in-chief of the army, analogous to François Dieussart’s marble portraits of the princes Willem I, Maurits, Frederik Hendrik and Willem II in armour for the staircase of Huis ten Bosch.10Dieussart’s marble portraits are illustrated in Lunsingh-Scheurleer 1969, p. 37, figs. 4-7. Of the three portraits in the series, the present one is the liveliest in execution, and contains much more impasto than the others. It is tempting to conclude that Honthorst paid more attention to this work’s execution in the realization that it would inevitably be compared to Van Dyck’s 1641 Portrait of Willem II and Mary Stuart (SK-A-102). The latter painting also came to hang in Amalia’s apartments in Huis ten Bosch. The warm glow and vivacity of the putti in the present work are absent in the other portraits in the series, but can be compared with the putti in Van Dyck’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt11St Petersburg, Hermitage; illustrated in Van der Ploeg/Vermeeren 1997b, p. 48, fig. 19. and Amaryllis and Mirtillo,12Pommersfelden, Graf von Schönborn collection; illustrated in The Hague 1997, p. 115, no. 5. two paintings that were in the stadholder’s collection.13See also the entry on SK-A-874.

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. 140.


Literature

Lunsingh Scheurleer 1969, p. 60; Judson/Ekkart1999, pp. 36, 237-40, no. 301, with earlier literature


Collection catalogues

1886, p. 36, no. 156C; 1887, p. 80, no. 675; 1903, p. 133, no. 1237; 1934, p. 135, no. 1237; 1976, p. 285, no. A 871; 1992, p. 57, no. A 871; 2007, no. 140


Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Gerard van Honthorst, Portrait of Willem II (1626-1650), Prince of Orange, and his Wife Mary Stuart (1631-1660), 1647', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8759

(accessed 27 April 2025 16:10:13).

Footnotes

  • 1Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer I, 1974, p. 283.
  • 2Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer I, 1974, p. 539.
  • 3Oslo, National Gallery, Printroom; illustrated in Judson/Ekkart 1999, pl. 395.
  • 4Illustrated in Judson/Ekkart 1999, pl. 16.
  • 5Amalia van Solms and her Sister Louise Christina of Solms-Braunfels as Diana and a Hunting Nymph, present whereabouts unknown; see Judson/Ekkart 1999, pp. 235-36, no. 297.
  • 6Aeneas Fleeing from the Sack of Troy, present whereabouts unknown; see Judson/Ekkart 1999, p. 106, no. 89.
  • 7King Charles I of England and his Wife Queen Henrietta Maria as Apollo and Diana, Hampton Court Palace; illustrated in Judson/Ekkart 1999, pl. 45.
  • 8Van Hoogstraeten 1678, p. 234; Braun 1966, p. 57, doc. 87, 1649 letter from Constantijn Huygens to Amalia van Solms.
  • 9De Jongh in Haarlem 1986, p. 152.
  • 10Dieussart’s marble portraits are illustrated in Lunsingh-Scheurleer 1969, p. 37, figs. 4-7.
  • 11St Petersburg, Hermitage; illustrated in Van der Ploeg/Vermeeren 1997b, p. 48, fig. 19.
  • 12Pommersfelden, Graf von Schönborn collection; illustrated in The Hague 1997, p. 115, no. 5.
  • 13See also the entry on SK-A-874.