Cast with the aid of a multi-piece mould taken from the sitter’s face while he was still alive. The casting seams can still be seen.

…; from the heirs of Jonkheer Hendrik Teding van Berkhout (1879-1969), Amsterdam,¹¹Possibly inherited by one of his daughters, Susanna Frida barones van Höevell-Teding van Berkhout (1909-1998) or Jonkvrouwe Anna Clara Teding van Berkhout (1910-2001), Bergen (N.H.). to the museum, date unknown, first documented in 1997

Object number: BK-1996-14

Like many of his fellow countrymen confronted with the violence of the First World War, the Belgian sculptor and painter Rik Wouters fled to the Netherlands in 1914. As a soldier, he was stationed with his battalion at a camp in Amersfoort and later in Zeist.²²See J.F. Heijbroek, Rik Wouters in Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2018 for this and subsequent biographical information. During this time, a group of art lovers and curators working for the Rijksmuseum offered him, together with his wife, Nel Duerinckx, a place to live in Amsterdam.³³Among them the affluent Amsterdam tobacco merchant Eppe Harkema (1869-1938), Nic. Beets – together with his in-laws, members of the Van Regteren Altena family – Jonkheer Henk Teding van Berkhout, Willem Steenhoff and Aart Pit. The last four were all officially affiliated with the Rijksmuseum, see Heijbroek 2018, pp. 5-11, 18-21. Even prior to this move, Wouters was suffering from a painful, and persistent lump in his mouth cavity: cancer of the jawbone, though the diagnosis was not immediately apparent.⁴⁴J.F. Heijbroek, Rik Wouters in Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2018, pp. 26-27. See also P.P. Devriese, ‘De laatste levensjaren van Rik Wouters’, Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde (March 1994), pp. 58-64. This ultimately led to surgery on his jaw in March 1915, which nevertheless failed to solve the problem. On 14 October of that same year, a second, more invasive operation was deemed necessary.⁵⁵J.F. Heijbroek, Rik Wouters in Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2018, pp. 30, 31, 36-38. At this time, a major portion of the right side and roof of Wouters’s mouth was removed. A third operation followed in April 1916. When his condition again took a turn for the worse, it became clear his death was impending. Rik Wouters perished on the night of 11 July at the Prinsengracht Hospital in Amsterdam and was buried at the Buitenveldert Roman Catholic cemetery in the municipality of Nieuwer-Amstel (now part of the City of Amsterdam).

Twelve days prior to his death, Wouters’s former teacher, the Brussels sculptor Albert Aerts (1851-1918), paid him a visit. Aerts was in Amsterdam working on the restoration of the Quellinus sculptures at the Royal Palace on Dam Square in the years 1915-17.⁶⁶Y. Koopmans, Muurvast en gebeiteld: Beeldhouwkunst in de bouw 1840-1940/Fixed and Chiseled: Sculpture in Architecture 1840-1940, Rotterdam 1997, pp. 306, 340; Aerts worked on this project together with the sculptors Lukas van der Meer (1881-1949), Frans Werner (1879-1955) and others. During his visit, Aerts made casts of Wouters’s face and one of his hands. Five casts of this ‘death mask’ were made in plaster and one in bronze.⁷⁷The bronze version is in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, inv. no. 11625, this museum also holds one of the plaster casts (inv. no. 10298); see J. van Lennep, Catalogus van beeldhouwkunst: Kunstenaars geboren tussen 1750 en 1882, coll. cat. Brussels (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium) 1992, p. 402. Aerts kept one of the five plasters for himself. The present mask was initially in the possession of Jonkheer Henk Teding van Berkhout (1879-1969), then director of the Rijksprentenkabinet, who also made a drawing of the mask (RP-T-1987-44). Following Wouters’s death, Teding van Berkhout had gone to great lengths to ensure proper care of the sculptor’s workshop estate.⁸⁸J.F. Heijbroek, Rik Wouters in Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2018. Conceivable is that the cast was given to him by Wouters’s widow, prior to her leaving the Netherlands in 1919, as a token of thanks for his efforts and as a memento of her husband.

Frits Scholten, 2026

J.F. Heijbroek, Rik Wouters in Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2018, p. 49 (with fig.)

F. Scholten, 2026, 'Albert Aerts, Death Mask Rik Wouters (1882-1916), Amsterdam, 1916', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20061847