Support The single, vertically grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 1.2 cm thick at the top and on the left, and approx. 0.7 cm at the bottom and on the right. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks, as well as horizontal chisel marks (approx. 0.7 cm wide) and a deep horizontal gouge of approx. 18 cm (approx. 1 cm wide) in the top half of the plank.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends over the edges of the support, and there are a few smears on the reverse. It consists mostly of white pigment with an addition of translucent, black and red pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light. The figures and the tree were reserved in the background, unlike the dog and the capital of the column, as was revealed by infrared reflectography and X-radiography. Cross-sections from the left edge show two layers: the first greyish brown, the second brown. The latter is possibly part of the fluid, dilute, dark brown undermodelling which has remained visible in the faces and in the woman’s skirt. An opaque, grey mid-tone underpainting can be seen locally, especially at the outlines of the couple, for example under the man’s right arm. The contour of the woman’s shoulders was adjusted with the umber-coloured paint of the upper layer of the landscape, which is clearly visible with infrared photography. The shot-silk effect of the skirt was created with a transparent scumble of orange for the mid-tones, creating a blurry effect, and an opaque orange for the highlights. The deepest shadows consist of the undermodelling left bare. The faces were built up in a similar way with opaque, smoothly blended flesh tones for the lights, and a thinner scumble of the same paint for the cool mid-tone transition to shadow. In raking light it is evident that the paint layers of the figures and tree trunk are much thinner than the surrounding ones which appear to cover a previous version of the background. Infrared reflectography revealed a vague upright, rectangular shape with a rounded top under the landscape to the left of the couple, which appears to correspond to one of two light-coloured, parallel arched forms, visible with X-radiography. This could suggest that initially there was a small gateway. Infrared reflectography also showed a few final adjustments. The man’s right hand, for example, was originally somewhat higher and his boots extended further to the right.
Gwen Tauber, 2021

Fair. The black paint of the clothing is heavily abraded.

…; ? Adriaen Wittert van der Aa (1641-1698), Leiden; his son, Adriaen Wittert van der Aa (1672-1713), Leiden and Slot Cronenburgh, near Loenen; probate inventory, his widow, Anna Maria van Moens (1678-1726), Slot Cronenburgh, 19 July 1727, in the room behind the large salon above the kitchen (‘1 dito 2 portretties zijnde 1 man met 1 vrouw met 1 hontie);¹¹T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, C.W. Fock and A.J. van Dissel (eds.), Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, IIIb, Leiden 1988, p. 495. ? her brother, Gerbrand, Count of Moens (1680-1759), Amsterdam; his daughter, Maria Magdalenavan Sluypwijk, Countess of Moens (1710/11-1802); her sale, Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 20 April 1803 sqq., no. 20 (‘hoog 30, breed 24 duim [78.5 x 62.8 cm], Paneel. Dit voortreffelyk Tafreel, vertoond in een Boomryk Landschap, een staand Heer met een Wandelstok in de hand; neevens hem zit zyne Gemalinne, zy zyn beiden in ryke Deftige Kleeding uitgedost, ter zyde op de grond staat een Hondje, en op de voorgrond legt een Capiteel van de Corintische Order, waar in het Portrait van G. Dou geplaast is, de Hoofd-Personaadie is het Afbeeldzel van den Roemwaardigen Pieter van de Werve, Burgemeester der Stad Leyden, die in de zwaare Beleegering door de Spanjaarden in den Jaren 1574, en in de grootste Hongersnoot zyn Vaderlyke Liefde aan zynen Medeburgers Edelmoedig te kennen gaf, met zyn eigen Vleesch tot Spys aan te bieden’), fl. 3,200, to the dealer C.S. Roos;²²Copy RKD. from whom, fl. 3,576, to the museum, 11 August 1803³³E.W. Moes and E. van Biema, De Nationale Konst-Gallery en het Koninklijk Museum, Amsterdam 1909, pp. 63, 196, 209. First mentioned in the museum in the April 1804 inventory drawn up by J.G. Waldorp, no. 11; see ibid., pp. 68, 158. Provenance reconstructed in R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Supplement op de in 1976 uitgegeven catalogus van schilderijen: Het portret van een man en een vrouw in een landschap door Dou en Berchem’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), pp. 14-16, esp. p. 14.

Object number: SK-A-90

If an auction catalogue of 1818 is to be believed, this Portrait of a Couple in a Landscape is not the only joint painting by Gerrit Dou and Nicolaes Berchem.⁷⁷Sale, London (European Museum), April 1818, no. 353 (‘Cattle and Figures, with a female figure by Gerrard Dow, concealed.’). The picture has been attributed to the two artists since the museum’s very earliest collection catalogues, but they did not work on it at the same time.⁸⁸C. Apostool, Catalogus der schilderijen, oudheden, enz. op het Koninklijk Museum te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1809, p. 18, no. 72. Berchem signed his name at the bottom left and probably added Dou’s on the Corinthian capital in the foreground, on which there is a relief with Dou’s portrait accompanied by his customary ligated signature.⁹⁹The meaning of the Roman numerals ‘XII.X.X’ behind it is unclear. R.W. Hunnewell, Gerrit Dou’s Self Portraits and Depictions of the Artist, diss., Boston University Graduate School 1983, p. 251, interprets this architectonic element as a reminder of the passage of time.

Dou painted the figures, which are datable from their clothing to the mid-1630s.¹⁰¹⁰Compare J.H. der Kinderen-Besier, Spelevaart der mode: De kledij onzer voorouders in de zeventiende eeuw, Amsterdam 1950, pp. 124-25, figs. 102d, 103b. The brown riding boots under the man’s black attire can also be dated to that period; see ibid., pp. 91-92. An early example of this combination is found in Thomas de Keyser’s 1627 Portrait of Constantijn Huygens and his (?) Clerk, London, The National Gallery; illustrated in N. MacLaren, The Dutch School: 1600-1900, coll. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1991, II pl. 184. R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Supplement op de in 1976 uitgegeven catalogus van schilderijen: Het portret van een man en een vrouw in een landschap door Dou en Berchem’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), pp. 14-16, esp. p. 15, states that the sitters’ clothing rules out the later dating to 1650-55 in W. Martin, Gerard Dou: Des Meisters Gemälde in 247 Abbildunge, Stuttgart/Berlin 1913, p. 56, but himself dates Dou’s contribution to 1640-45. R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, II, p. 38.2, dates Dou’s share c. 1640-45. It has been suggested on the evidence of an X-radiograph that he depicted the couple in an interior,¹¹¹¹R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Supplement op de in 1976 uitgegeven catalogus van schilderijen: Het portret van een man en een vrouw in een landschap door Dou en Berchem’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), pp. 14-16, esp. p. 15. but although there is an arched shape that might be a small gateway,¹²¹²See Technical notes. the photograph contains too little information to warrant that conclusion. Such a full-length double portrait in an interior would be exceptional in Dou’s oeuvre, for he usually opted for oval formats and half-lengths or busts for his rare individual portraits.¹³¹³The Brooklyn Museum in New York has a double portrait that probably originates from the circle around Dou; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 595, no. 298 (as Dou). However, it is not impossible that Dou painted the couple indoors. The influence of Thomas de Keyser led to the growing popularity in the late 1620s and ’30s of small-figured individual and double portraits in which members of urban elites were shown full length in informal poses in realistic interiors.¹⁴¹⁴See, for instance, De Keyser’s Portrait of a Couple, present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in D.R. Smith, ‘Rembrandt’s Early Double Portraits and the Dutch Conversation Piece’, The Art Bulletin 64 (1982), pp. 259-88, esp. p. 261, fig. 2. The depiction of the present couple fits in with that trend. Their fashionable clothing and placement prompted Baer to suggest the possible influence of a double portrait formerly in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston that was executed in Rembrandt’s workshop in the early 1630s.¹⁵¹⁵Stolen in 1990; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, II, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster 1986, p. 728. R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, II, pp. 38.2-38.3.

Berchem’s contribution, with his characteristic dog, dates from considerably later than Dou’s portraits. His signature at the bottom left is in a manner that he used from around 1656 to circa 1664.¹⁶¹⁶W. Stechow, ‘Über das Verhältnis zwischen Signatur und Chronologie bei einigen holländischen Künstlern des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in H. Ladendorf (ed.), Festschrift Eduard Trautscholdt zum 70. Geburtstag, Hamburg 1965, pp. 111-17, esp. pp. 113-15. It is difficult to date this rather generic landscape, partly because Berchem often reused compositions and motifs from earlier works in undated ones made after 1658.¹⁷¹⁷L. Pijl, ‘De schilderijen van Nicolaes Berchem: Invloeden en ontwikkeling’, in P. Biesboer et al., Nicolaes Berchem: In het licht van Italië, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Zürich (Kunsthaus)/Schwerin (Staatliches Museum) 2006-07, pp. 72-93, esp. p. 92. However, the palette, the way in which the trees are abruptly cut off by the edges of the picture, the rendering of the foliage and vegetation, and the contrast between the dark leaves and the lighter background do have a certain resemblance to Landscape with the Disobedient Prophet of 1664.¹⁸¹⁸Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; illustrated in P. Biesboer et al., Nicolaes Berchem: In het licht van Italië, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Zürich (Kunsthaus)/Schwerin (Staatliches Museum) 2006-07, p. 74. Berchem’s share may be from the first half of the 1660s, when he was working in Amsterdam. This might also be an indication that the sitters or the owner of the painting were also living in Amsterdam at the time.

One can only guess at the reasons for Berchem’s contribution to the composition. It does not seem very likely that Dou left the picture unfinished and that Berchem completed it some 30 years later. One possibility is that the original setting around the figures had become damaged through, for example, careless cleaning and that Berchem overpainted it. It is also possible that the addition should be seen as a modernisation of the work, replacing an old-fashioned interior from the 1630s with an idealized landscape of the kind fairly common in portraits of the 1650s and ’60s.

The identity of the sitters had already been forgotten when the picture was mentioned in 1727.¹⁹¹⁹See Provenance. The work was sold in 1803 as a likeness of the famous seventeenth-century Leiden burgomaster Pieter van der Werff and his wife, an identification that would have appealed to patriotic feelings in view of Van der Werff’s legendary role in the revolt against Spanish rule.²⁰²⁰See Provenance. At the end of the nineteenth century it was thought that the couple were Berchem and his spouse,²¹²¹J. Six, ‘Opmerkingen omtrent eenige meesterwerken in ’s Rijks Museum’, Oud Holland 11 (1893), pp. 96-104, esp. p. 104. but that hypothesis and a later identification with Adriaen Wittert van der Aa (1641-1698) and his wife Maria Knotter (1651-1701) have been convincingly dismissed.²²²²R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Supplement op de in 1976 uitgegeven catalogus van schilderijen: Het portret van een man en een vrouw in een landschap door Dou en Berchem’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), pp. 14-16, esp. p. 15. Although Wittert van der Aa was the earliest known possible owner of the work, he cannot be the male sitter because he was not yet born when it was executed in 1635-40. Another hypothesis is that it depicts his parents, Johan Wittert van der Aa (1604-1670) and Ida Popta (1604-1664).²³²³T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, C.W. Fock and A.J. van Dissel (eds.), Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, IIIb, Leiden 1988, p. 462. In his will of 9 December 1669 Johan left his son Adriaen the ‘testator’s likeness painted by Mr Dou, and the portraits of his deceased wife, parents and parents-in-law’.²⁴²⁴Published in E.B.F.F. Wittert van Hoogland, Geschiedenis van het geslacht Wittert (Wittert van Hoogland en Emiclaer, Wittert van Valkenburg, Wittert van Bloemendael, Wittert van der Aa) met de daaruit in vrouwelijke lijn gesproten familiën, III, The Hague 1914, p. 1547. For Dou’s portrait of Johan Wittert van der Aa, see SK-A-686. That description does not make it at all clear whether there was a double portrait or even whether Dou painted his wife’s portrait. In addition, Johan and Ida’s shared year of birth, 1604, argues against that identification, because the sitters look a good bit younger than 30. Baer mentions an unpublished suggestion by Bert van Dissel that the couple are an uncle of Dou’s Leiden patron Johan de Bye and Duyffgen Bartholomeesdr van Assendelft.²⁵²⁵R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, II, p. 38.7, note 23. They married in November 1634, around the time the portraits were probably made, but once again their age is a problem. Ekkart has cautiously advanced the theory that the sitters are not a married couple but are siblings,²⁶²⁶R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Supplement op de in 1976 uitgegeven catalogus van schilderijen: Het portret van een man en een vrouw in een landschap door Dou en Berchem’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), pp. 14-16, esp. p. 15. namely Johan de Bye and his sister Anna de Bye.²⁷²⁷Oral communication, Rudi Ekkart, 2010. There were ties between the Wittert van der Aa family and Johan de Bye. Adriaen Wittert van der Aa inherited several paintings by Dou from his mother Maria Knotter, who in 1672 was the sole heir of her uncle Johan de Bye.²⁸²⁸Adriaen Wittert van der Aa’s will of 21 January 1703 speaks of ‘the costly cabinet of paintings still jointly belonging to him, the testator, and his (…) brother, consisting of the pieces made by Dou’. The latter works were bequeathed to Adriaen by his brother Johan. See E.B.F.F. Wittert van Hoogland, Geschiedenis van het geslacht Wittert (Wittert van Hoogland en Emiclaer, Wittert van Valkenburg, Wittert van Bloemendael, Wittert van der Aa) met de daaruit in vrouwelijke lijn gesproten familiën, III, The Hague 1914, p. 1597; also T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, C.W. Fock and A.J. van Dissel (eds.), Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, IIIb, Leiden 1988, pp. 464-65. Though the Rijksmuseum picture does not match any of the known titles of works owned by De Bye,²⁹²⁹See W. Martin, Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou beschouwd in verband met het schildersleven van zijn tijd, diss., Leiden University 1901, pp. 171-72, for that list. it is also not impossible that it too came from his collection. Nonetheless, an identification with Dou’s patron is unlikely, firstly because Johan was born around 1625 and Anna probably a little after their parents’ wedding in 1621, which would have made them roughly 10 and at most 13 years old when the portraits were painted, which rules them out.³⁰³⁰With thanks to Piet de Baar for this information. Secondly, the woman is wearing a three-piece overgown costume, which was pretty much standard attire for middle-class married women or widows in the period 1600-40.³¹³¹M. de Winkel, ‘The Artist as Couturier’: The “Portrayal” of Clothing in the Golden Age’, in Q. Buvelot (ed.), Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, exh. cat. London (The National Gallery)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2007-08, pp. 65-75, esp. pp. 67-68. With thanks to Myranda van den Hoogen for drawing my attention to this.

There are several iconographic clues that this is a marriage portrait. For example, the ivy or vine that Berchem depicted growing against the oak on the right is an age-old token not only of love and matrimony but also of mutual faithfulness, devotion and friendship.³²³²See E. de Jongh, Portretten van echt en trouw: Huwelijk en gezin in de Nederlandse kunst van de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum) 1986, p. 126. See also R.W. Hunnewell, Gerrit Dou’s Self Portraits and Depictions of the Artist, diss., Boston University Graduate School 1983, p. 250, on Dou’s portrait and that symbolism. The setting has been interpreted as a garden of love,³³³³R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, II, pp. 38.5-38.6. but that is going too far for this rather generic landscape. One striking motif is that the woman is wearing one glove while the other lies on the ground beside her, which is found more frequently in male portraits.³⁴³⁴On this see D.R. Smith, The Dutch Double and Pair Portrait: Studies in the Imagery of Marriage in the Seventeenth Century, diss., Colombia University, New York 1978, pp. 79-80.

In 1739 the Frisian portrait and history painter Gerard Wigmana made a genre scene in which he derived a seated woman from the present work.³⁵³⁵Sale, Belton House, Lincolnshire, sold on the premises (Christie’s), 1 May 1984, no. 573. A now unlocated copy after the entire picture by Dou was auctioned in Amsterdam in 1894.³⁶³⁶Sale, Amsterdam (Bom & Zoon), 4 (5) July 1894 sqq., no. 24, as after Gerrit Dou.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, I, London 1829, p. 42, no. 126; E.-J.-T. Thoré (pseud. W. Bürger), Musées de la Hollande, I, Paris 1858, p. 85; W. Martin, Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou beschouwd in verband met het schildersleven van zijn tijd, diss., Leiden University 1901, pp. 205-06, no. 155; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, I, Esslingen/Paris 1907, p. 440, no. 334; R.W. Hunnewell, Gerrit Dou’s Self Portraits and Depictions of the Artist, diss., Boston University Graduate School 1983, pp. 249-51; R.E.O. Ekkart, ‘Supplement op de in 1976 uitgegeven catalogus van schilderijen: Het portret van een man en een vrouw in een landschap door Dou en Berchem’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 36 (1988), pp. 14-16; R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, II, pp. 38.1-38.7, no. 38

1809, p. 18, no. 72; 1843, p. 16, no. 71 (‘the figures are in good condition, apart from a few small spots in the woman’s face, the background, which is completely mortified, is overpainted around the man’s head and is heavily beaded due to desiccation, although probably reparable, the man’s black cloak has suffered’); 1853, p. 9, no. 68 (fl. 30,000); 1858, p. 31, no. 68 (as Portraits of Pieter van der Werf, Burgomaster of Leiden, and his Wife); 1880, pp. 86-87, no. 76; 1887, p. 36, no. 279; 1903, p. 84, no. 794; 1934, p. 84, no. 794 (as Portraits of a Gentleman and a Lady, probably Adriaen Wittert van der Aa and his Wife Maria Knotter); 1960, p. 85, no. 794 (as Portrait of a Lady and a Gentleman in a Landscape, probably Adriaen Wittert van der Aa and his Wife Maria Knotter); 1976, p. 198, no. A 90

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2026, 'Gerrit Dou and Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem, Portrait of a Couple in a Landscape, c. 1635 - c. 1665', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200109263