The reverse of the integrated base is hollowed out before firing. Coated with a finished layer.

There is damage to the top and to the left corner of the plinth, resulting in the loss of the initial preceding Van Dieren’s last name. Much of the finishing layer is missing.

…; from the dealer ’t Pothuys, Amsterdam, fl. 450, to the museum, 1962

Object number: BK-1962-2

The inscription on the base informs us that this portrait depicts the Amsterdam painter, Jan Stolker (1724-1785) at the age of 27 and that it was modelled by a certain ‘v. Dieren’. There are two fairly obscure sculptors with that name who are eligible for its authorship. They are a father and son, both called Hendrik van Dieren. Van Dieren senior (1709-1758) was baptized in the Grote Kerk of The Hague on 27 February 1709 and began as a beeltgieter en fonteijnwerker (statuary founder and fountain maker) in Haarlem on 27 March 1734, where he remained, at least until 1742.¹¹De Brabantse Leeuw 1964, p. 33. It is not known where the sculptor lived in 1751 when Stolker’s portrait was made. Van Dieren was then about 42 years old. In 1758 he became a soldier with the Dutch East India Company (VOC), presumably for financial reasons. On 8 July of that year he died on board the VOC ship the Hof de Uno during the voyage to Batavia.²²The Hague, National Archives, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), inv. no. 13096. His son, Hendrik Melchior van Dieren (1733-c. 1783) was baptized in The Hague on 22 February 1733 and moved to Amsterdam in 1750, where he obtained his official burghership status in 1753 and went on to register in the local Guild of St Luke, as a founder of statuary and garden ornaments.³³P. Scheen, Lexicon Nederlandse beeldende kunstenaars, 1750-1950, The Hague 1969-70, vol. 2, p. 400. When the portrait was being made he was about eighteen years old and, like the subject of the portrait, also in Amsterdam.

The strange composition of the portrait was clearly based on a famous ancient bust known as the Dying Alexander. For many years this work, which has been in Florence since the sixteenth century, was thought to be a portrait of Alexander the Great.⁴⁴F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven/London 1981, no. 2. It owes its reputation to the fame of the subject and, in particular, the distinctive physiognomy. Appreciation for the piece only diminished at the end of the eighteenth century, when doubts were raised as to the identification with Alexander the Great. With the many casts and copies, the ‘dying Alexander’ had become well known throughout Europe in the meantime.

The portrait of Jan Stolker has a great deal in common with the famous classical bust: the positioning of the head tilting backwards from the neck (although in mirror image), the full head of curly hair, the upraised gaze, the somewhat dramatic expression, the termination of the chest and the lack of clothing. Such careful development of a well-known portrait from ancient times is an artistic gimmick that would not have escaped other artists. It would be grounds for considering Stolker’s work as a portrait of a friend, possibly in the context of an exchange between colleagues. In view of the small age difference between Hendrik van Dieren junior and his sitter, one might assume the son was the sculptor and not his father. However, this cannot be corroborated by style analysis, as there are no other known works by the younger artist. There is just one surviving sculpture by Hendrik van Dieren senior: a life-size bust of Stadholder William IV (1711-1751), in bronzed white metal (zinc?), with the signature H. van Dieren in Haarlem, fec., ⁵⁵Haarlem, Teylers Museum, inv. no. Ksc 003, see J.H. van Borssum Buisman et al., ‘Teyler’ 1778-1978: Studies en bijdragen over Teylers Stichting naar aanleiding van het tweede eeuwfeest, Haarlem/Antwerp 1978, p. 150, fig. 32. originating from the collection of the contemporaneous Haarlem collector Pieter Teyler (1702-1778). Interestingly, the portrait certainly does not much resemble the stadholder, but despite the different medium and the more formal character of the portrait, it does have some striking similarities with the present terracotta. The faces have been developed in a comparable, little-detailed way, have a similar round, somewhat protruding jaw, a narrow forehead and eyes with flat eyeballs. This kinship would bear out attribution to the father but provides no certainty, since the son could also have worked in the same style.

Bieke van der Mark and Frits Scholten, 2025
An earlier version of this entry was published in F. Scholten, Gebeeldhouwde portretten/Portrait Sculptures, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995, no. 38

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 413; F. Scholten, Gebeeldhouwde portretten/Portrait Sculptures, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995, no. 38

B. van der Mark and F. Scholten, 2025, 'Hendrick van Dieren, Portrait of the Painter Jan Stolker (1724-1785) as the Dying Alexander, Amsterdam, 1751', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035852