Portrait of a Man, possibly Walterus Fourmenois (1596-1653)

The oak support consists of three vertically grained planks and is bevelled on all sides. The brushstrokes of the thin off-white ground layer are visible. There is a light grey deadcolour under the sitter's face, hands and collar. The paint was applied smoothly with impasted highlights. There is a pentimento in the cuff of the sitter’s glove.

Fair. The painting was heavily retouched during an undocumented restoration that probably took place in the 1950s or 60s. There are pinpoint losses throughout. The varnish is yellowish in some areas.

...; documented at Kasteel Popkensburg in an 18th-century manuscript;¹¹RAU, PA 26, Des Tombe archive, inv. no. 18, ‘Genealogieën, genealogische en heraldische aantekeningen betreffende de familie van Citters en aanverwante families, (17e-19e eeuw): Boudaen (Courten), Walleran Sandra, Fourmenois, Buteux, Hoeufft’, no. 18: ‘1620’. ? by descent through the families Boudaen Courten, Van Citters, Verheije van Citters, to Jonkheer Jacob de Witte van Citters (1817-76), The Hague; by whom bequeathed to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1876;²²RAU, PA 26, Des Tombe archive, inv. no. 1038, ‘Testament van Jacob de Witte van Citters’, 16 June 1875. transferred to the museum, 1885

ObjectNumber: SK-A-911

Credit line: Jonkheer J. de Witte van Citters Bequest, The Hague

A young man is seated in a luxurious chair of carved wood and embroidered upholstery. He is wearing sumptuous and fashionable clothes with a collar and cuffs made solely of needlepoint lace. In his left hand he has a pair of gloves, the cuffs of which are decorated with satin ribbons.⁵⁵The Rijksmuseum has an identical pair on loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap (inv. no. KOG 19) and according to Du Mortier (in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 477-78) they are very probably the pair depicted in this painting.

Like the preceding paintings, this work comes from Kasteel Popkensburg. The inscription on the back, which probably dates from the 18th century, identifies the young man as a son of Margarita Courten (SK-A-2073) and Matthias Boudaen, which means that he is a brother of Pieter Boudaen Courten (SK-A-2068).⁶⁶The coat of arms later added on the back of the panel is identical to that on the back of the portrait of Pieter Boudaen Courten; see the entry on SK-A-2068. However, this identification is very probably wrong. Pieter had three brothers, Matthias, Jacob and Willem, who were born in 1584, 1586 and 1589 respectively, and were thus between five and ten years older than him. This man, though, looks younger than Pieter. Moreover, it is doubtful that Matthias, Jacob and Willem were still alive in 1620, for not one of them is mentioned in the family chronicle that Pieter Boudaen Courten started in 1618.⁷⁷Wuestman 2005.

That being said, the sitter should indeed probably be sought in Pieter Boudaen Courten’s circle. In the 18th century, this painting hung in a room with all the portraits of the family of Pieter Boudaen Courten and those related to him by marriage.⁸⁸See Provenance. There has been speculation based on stylistic arguments that the portrait is English,⁹⁹Oral communication, R.E.O. Ekkart, 2003. which would suggest that the sitter belonged to the English branch of the Courten family. That, though, is not very convincing. Moreover, the chair on which the man is sitting, which was of very recent Dutch manufacture,¹⁰¹⁰Oral communication, Reinier Baarsen, 2004. makes it much more likely that the painting was made in Holland.¹¹¹¹The Rijksmuseum has a very similar chair, inv. no. 16019; coll. cat. Amsterdam 2001, pp. 96-98 (ill.).

On the basis of his probable age and a certain resemblance to Boudaen Courten’s wife Catharina Fourmenois (SK-A-2069), it has also been suggested that the man is her brother, Walterus Fourmenois (1596-1653).¹²¹²Note IB. Recent research has revealed that Walterus was born in 1596.¹³¹³ZA, PA 64.1, inv. no. 31, ‘Register der Archiven, Documenten en Papieren etc.’, fol. 193. This means that he was 24 in 1620, which seems to match the age of the sitter. Even stronger arguments in favour of this identification can be put forward. In the 17th century Walterus was referred to as ‘Lamme Courten’ (Lame Courten), so he was probably disabled. That could explain his stiff pose in this portrait and the fact that he is seated, which was an unusual pose for a young man in 17th-century painting.¹⁴¹⁴Oral communication, R.E.O. Ekkart, 2004. The provenance from Kasteel Popkensburg also fits in with this theory, for it was thanks to Walterus Fourmenois that the castle came into the family.¹⁵¹⁵RAU, PA 26, Des Tombe archive, nos. 1737 and 1742; Van den Broecke 1978, p. 44. Because his marriage to Maria Romans was childless, he bequeathed the castle, which was bought in 1631, to his sister Catharina. A note by Jacob van Citters, who lived in Popkensburg in the 18th century, states that there was a coat of arms of Walterus Fourmenois hanging in the castle,¹⁶¹⁶ZA, PA 64.1, inv. no. 31, ‘Register der Archiven, Documenten en Papieren etc.’, fol. 194. and it is likely that there was also a portrait of him there. It is impossible to say whether his features match those of this sitter, since there are no known portraits of him, but he does remain the most likely candidate.

This slickly painted work with the soft outlines and the sitter’s rather stiff pose has been associated with the painter Salomon Mesdach, as have several other portraits from the circle around the Boudaen Courten family.¹⁷¹⁷On this see the entry on SK-A-2068. In view of the similarity between this and the other paintings as regards style and structure of the paint layers, it can be taken that they are by the same hand. The attribution to Mesdach has therefore been retained.

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 178.

Wuestman 2005, pp. 43, 46, 49, note 14

1886, p. 98, no. 448o (as Dutch School, Portrait of Boudaen Courten); 1887, p. 74, no. 603 (as Dutch School, Portrait of Pieter Boudaen Courten); 1903, p. 171, no. 1542 (as Mesdach, Portrait of a Man of the Boudaen Courten Family); 1934, p. 183, no. 1542 (as Mesdach, Portrait of a Man of the Boudaen Courten Family); 1960, p. 201, no. 1542 (as Mesdach, Portrait of a Member of the Boudaen Courten Family); 1976, p. 377, no. A 911 (as Mesdach, Portrait of a Man from the Boudaen Courten Family); 2007, no. 178

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'attributed to Salomon Mesdach, Portrait of a Man, possibly Walterus Fourmenois (1596-1653), 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9072