Johannes Thopas (Arnhem 1625 - probably Zaandam before 1695)

He grew up in Utrecht and Emmerich, where his mother’s second husband, Johannes Wijer (?-?), served as burgomaster. Thopas, who was born deaf, was probably self-taught. He does not feature in art-historical biographies from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But from the early twentieth century, he was the ‘most prolific of the great plumbago (leadpoint) artists of the Rembrandt period’ and a ‘master of chiaroscuro’ who managed to make the ‘characters of his sitters leap out at us.’¹¹W. Mills, ‘Dutch Plumbagos: The Clements Collection’, The Connoisseur 37 (1913), pp. 153-60 (esp. p. 155). Because of his deafness, he lived with family members his entire life and needed the help of a guardian in all official matters. He started to draw portraits while still in Utrecht in the mid-1640s, the earliest known examples being the Portrait of a Man and the Portrait of a Woman, each dated 1646, in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. nos. 1971-PM 4 and 1971-PM 5).²²R.E.O. Ekkart, Deaf, Dumb & Brilliant: Johannes Thopas, Master Draughtsman, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, nos. 1-2. His approach to portraiture followed the example set by Utrecht painters such as Jan van Bijlert (1597/98-1671).³³Ibid., p. 43. From circa 1656-57 to 1662, Thopas lived in Amsterdam. In the course of the 1660s, he moved to Haarlem, where he entered the Guild of St Luke in 1668. In 1672, he must have moved to Assendelft, and he probably spent the last years of his life in Zaandam, where his sister (and then caretaker) Jacoba Thopas (?-before 1695) drew up her will in 1688.

Despite the sheltered life Thopas led, as an artist he was sought after by the rich and influential. His oeuvre consists of more than sixty portrait drawings on vellum, including some commissioned by members of highly respected Dutch families. His last dated drawings is a pair from 1684, the Portrait of a Man and the Portrait of a Woman in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (inv. nos. P.26-1952 and P.27-1952).⁴⁴J. Shoaf Turner and C. White, Dutch & Flemish Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols., coll. cat. London 2014, I, nos. 205-06; R.E.O. Ekkart, Deaf, Dumb & Brilliant: Johannes Thopas, Master Draughtsman, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, nos. 65-66. There is only one known painting by the artist, Girl on her Deathbed in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (inv. no. 1159).⁵⁵Ibid., no. 67.

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

References
W. Mills, ‘Dutch Plumbagos: The Clements Collection’, The Connoisseur 37 (1913), pp. 153-60 (esp. p. 155); R.E.O. Ekkart, Deaf, Dumb & Brilliant: Johannes Thopas, Master Draughtsman, exh. cat. Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, pp. 15-23