Thomas de Keyser

Group Portrait of an Unidentified Body

c. 1625 - c. 1630

Technical notes

The plain-weave canvas support has been lined. Broad cusping is present on the left side and shallow cusping at the bottom. From the imprint of the original stretcher it is possible to determine that the painting has been trimmed on all four sides. There are two ground layers, the uppermost of which is grey. Brown dead-colouring was used for the hands and faces. Brushmarking is apparent in the hair and beards, and the flesh areas were painted wet in wet.

Scientific examination and reports

  • X-radiography: RMA, nos. 1355-1369, 23 maart 1973
  • technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 12 juni 2003

Condition

Fair. There is a fold at the level of the figures’ eyes. Small horizontal lines are present over the entire surface as a result of the canvas having been rolled up. The painting is somewhat worn throughout.

Conservation

  • J.A. Hesterman, 1974: complete restoration; canvas relined
  • L. Kuiper, 1974: complete restoration; canvas relined

Provenance

...; sale, Lord Ravensworth, Ravensworth Castle, Newcastle on Tyne, sold on the premises (Anderson and Garland), 15 June 1920, no. 65, as Ferdinand Bol, to W.E. Duits;1Copy RKD....; collection F. Enthoven, Amsterdam (on loan to the museum 1925-28); his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 October 1932, no. 13, fl. 5,200, to the dealer Nicolaas Beets;2Copy RMA....; collection A.F. Philips, Eindhoven;3Note RMA....; from the dealer H. Cramer, The Hague, fl. 150,000, to the museum, as a gift of the Vereniging Rembrandt, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and the Fotocommissie, 1973

ObjectNumber: SK-A-4236

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Stichting tot Bevordering van de Belangen van het Rijksmuseum

The artist

Biography

Thomas de Keyser (Amsterdam 1596/97 – Amsterdam 1667)

Based on the age (29) that he gave at his wedding on 5 July 1626, Thomas de Keyser was born in 1596 or 1597. A son of Hendrick de Keyser, the foremost sculptor and architect in the northern Netherlands, the place of Thomas’s birth was most likely Amsterdam, where his family had moved from Utrecht in 1591. From 1616 to 1618 he trained with his father in architecture under the auspices of the stonemasons’ guild. Given his late age of about 19 when he began this architectural apprenticeship, he had probably already received training as a painter. The four leading portrait painters of the time (Cornelis Ketel, Aert Pietersz, Pieter Isaacsz and Cornelis van der Voort) have all been advanced by scholars as his probable teacher, but nothing is known with certainty about his apprenticeship as a painter. Together with his brother Pieter, he joined the Guild of St Luke as a sculptor in 1622. His earliest dated painting, the fragmentary Portrait of Three Children and a Man (SK-A-1545), was executed in the same year. In 1626, he married Machtelt Andries, a member of a wealthy goldsmith’s family. He was one of 247 men and women to sign a petition in 1628 calling for legal toleration for worship by the members of the Remonstrant Church, and was among the founding members of the congregation when it was granted legal status in 1631.

De Keyser’s most productive years as a portrait painter were between 1625 and 1635. He joined the stonemasons’ guild in 1640, and was primarily active as a merchant in cut stone during the following two decades. Also in 1640, he remarried, his second wife being Aeltje Heymerix from Deventer. Around 1660, he once again began to paint with some regularity. In a document of 13 May 1662 he is named, along with Dirck van Santvoort, as a dean of the Guild of St Luke. Earlier that year he had been appointed city mason, a position his brothers Pieter and Willem had held before him. As city mason he would oversee the completion of the cupola of the town hall among other projects. The only known architectural design by Thomas de Keyser is of an unbuilt triumphal arch published in Salomon de Bray’s 1631 Architectura moderna.

Almost every portrait type produced in the United Provinces in the 17th century is represented in the 100 or so paintings that make up Thomas de Keyser’s oeuvre. In addition to the substantial innovations he brought to existing portrait types, such as the civic guard piece, De Keyser evolved one completely new one, the small-scale full-length portrait. The interior settings and active poses of the sitters in many of these works make them akin to contemporary genre paintings. De Keyser also made history paintings and portraits historiés, another painting type that weds different genres. His patrons included his first wife’s family and their gold- and silversmith colleagues, as well as members of the Remonstrant Church. In their role as city mason, his brothers Pieter and Willem likely played a role in some of the commissions Thomas obtained. For example, when, in 1652, he was commissioned to paint Ulysses Beseeching Nausica for the Bankruptcy Chamber of Amsterdam’s new town hall, Willem was overseeing its construction. Thomas de Keyser had at least two architectural apprentices during his career, while his nephew, Henry Stone (1616-53), is the only known probable painting apprentice.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Weissman 1904, pp. 79-83; Oldenbourg 1911, pp. 10-12; Schneider in Thieme/Becker XX, 1927, pp. 240-41; Adams 1985, I, pp. 18-44, 71-94, II, pp. 416-20, 439-40, 490-528 (documents); Adams in Turner 1996, XVIII, pp. 10-11; Ekkart 2002c, p. 32

Entry

There are six known group portraits from Thomas de Keyser’s hand, two civic guard pieces, three paintings showing members of the Amsterdam silver- and goldsmiths’ guild and the present work of an unidentified body. As in one of the portraits showing goldsmiths and silversmiths,4Signed with monogram and dated 1635; panel, 104.5 x 98.7 cm; sale, London (Christie’s), 11 December 2002, no. 49 (ill.). De Keyser arranged the three figures in the present painting in a pyramid around a table. The sense of unity and intimacy this innovative composition lends the portrait is further enhanced by the neutral background. Reinforcing the pyramidal composition is the diagonally placed table, a motif De Keyser borrowed from Werner van den Valckert, who first employed it in his 1622 Wardens of the Mercers’ Guild of Amsterdam.5Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; as pointed out in Van Thiel 1990, p. 41; for this and other examples in Van den Valckert’s oeuvre see Van Thiel 1983d, p. 163, figs. 40, 45-47. The sitters’ costumes, in particular the ruff worn by the figure on the right, and their execution, as well as such compositional elements as the diagonal table and the neutral background, indicate that the present painting should be dated to the second half of the 1620s. These features correspond well with De Keyser’s dated group portrait of the Syndics of the Amsterdam Goldsmiths’ Guild from 1627 in Toledo, Ohio.6Toledo Museum of Art; illustrated in coll. cat. Toledo 1976, p. 245. That the collars worn by the standing man and the one on the left would have been very old fashioned for this period need not contradict this dating, as these sitters were evidently quite old.

Going by the objects in the painting, the three men were probably bankers of some kind. Coins spill out of a bag on the table and are held by the figure on the right, who wears a touchstone ring used to ascertain silver and gold content. The figure on the left holds a small book, perhaps for keeping accounts, while the standing man holds a letter of credit with two wax seals. The marvellous gold or bronze assayer’s balance is surmounted by a griffin, a mythological creature that, according to the ancient Greeks, guarded the gold of the Scythians.

Claiming, rather speculatively, that the men were approximately 50, 60 and 70 years old when they sat for De Keyser, Dudok van Heel tentatively identified them as the governors of the Amsterdam Exchange Bank for the year 1619: Jacob Gerritsz Hoyngh (1555-1625), Roelof Egbertsz (c. 1547-1619) and Laurens Jansz Spiegel (1575-1623). This identification, however, can definitely be ruled out. Not only was the painting probably executed later than 1619, known portraits of Jacob Gerritsz Hoyngh and Laurens Jansz Spiegel leave no doubt that they are not the men in De Keyser’s portrait.7There is a portrait of Spiegel in the Album Backer preserved at the Amsterdams Historisch Museum. Dudok van Heel argued, strangely, that there is a resemblance between these two portraits. Hoyngh was portrayed twice as captain of civic guard companies, by Pieter Isaacsz in 1596 (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; illustrated in Haarlem 1988, p. 89, fig. 64) and in 1616 by Paulus Moreelse (SK-C-623). While Adams (1985, II, p. 329) tentatively accepted Dudok van Heel’s identification, P.J.J. van Thiel and F.G.L.O van Kretschmar did not (correspondence preserved at the IB, 25 April, 10, 15, 17 May, 5 June 1974). The sitters may have been governors of the Exchange Bank in another year. Other possibilities include the Amsterdam Loan Bank, established in 1614, or a private bank.8As suggested by Adams 1985, II, p. 330.

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. 159.

Literature

Van Thiel 1973; Dudok van Heel 1977; Adams 1985, II, pp. 326-30, III, p. 39, no. 15

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 320, no. A4236; 2007, no. 159

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Thomas de Keyser, Group Portrait of an Unidentified Body, c. 1625 - c. 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8887

(accessed 29 May 2025 06:39:11).

Footnotes

  • 1Copy RKD.
  • 2Copy RMA.
  • 3Note RMA.
  • 4Signed with monogram and dated 1635; panel, 104.5 x 98.7 cm; sale, London (Christie’s), 11 December 2002, no. 49 (ill.).
  • 5Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; as pointed out in Van Thiel 1990, p. 41; for this and other examples in Van den Valckert’s oeuvre see Van Thiel 1983d, p. 163, figs. 40, 45-47.
  • 6Toledo Museum of Art; illustrated in coll. cat. Toledo 1976, p. 245.
  • 7There is a portrait of Spiegel in the Album Backer preserved at the Amsterdams Historisch Museum. Dudok van Heel argued, strangely, that there is a resemblance between these two portraits. Hoyngh was portrayed twice as captain of civic guard companies, by Pieter Isaacsz in 1596 (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; illustrated in Haarlem 1988, p. 89, fig. 64) and in 1616 by Paulus Moreelse (SK-C-623). While Adams (1985, II, p. 329) tentatively accepted Dudok van Heel’s identification, P.J.J. van Thiel and F.G.L.O van Kretschmar did not (correspondence preserved at the IB, 25 April, 10, 15, 17 May, 5 June 1974).
  • 8As suggested by Adams 1985, II, p. 330.