Cast and mounted on a pedestal of Egyptian granite (granito verde e erbetta).¹¹G. Borghini (ed.), Marmi antichi, Rome 1998, p. 228 (no. 76).

Cast commissioned by the museum, from the bronze founder Johan Sterenberg (1920-2002),²²He used the mould from the original plaster model in possession of the sculptor’s widow, Mrs D.D. Wertheim-Sanson, Laren (N.-H.). With thanks to Jan Teeuwisse, 9 December 2014. Groningen, fl. 5,000, 1980

Object number: BK-1980-157

This bust portrait of Rijksmuseum director Arthur François Emile (‘Sjeu’) van Schendel Jr at the age of twenty-one was made by a close family friend, the sculptor Johan Gustaaf (‘Jobs’) Wertheim (1898-1977). The sculptor’s first contact with the Schendel family – Arthur Sr., a renowned Dutch writer, and his family had been living in Italy since 1920 – likely occurred in 1927 in Florence. Having won the Prix de Rome the year before, Wertheim had chosen to remain in Italy.³³For Van Schendel Jr, see the Huygens Institute website and M. Tuijn (ed.), Prix de Rome MDCCCVIII MMVIII, Amsterdam 2008, pp. 122, 165. In 1930, he left Italy and moved to Paris, where he spent his final year studying on his award stipend. It was during this period that Wertheim produced his portrait of the young Van Schendel, then studying art history at the Sorbonne. The bust – one of Wertheim’s earliest portraits – was also submitted to the jury of the Prix de Rome.⁴⁴I.Q. van Regteren Altena et al. Johan G. Wertheim 1898-1977, exh. cat. Laren (Singer Museum) 1978, p. 6. An early bronze version of the same portrait is today preserved at the Museum Henriëtte Polak in Zutphen. The Rijksmuseum cast, produced in 1980, was made by the sculptor Johan Sterenberg, a friend of Wertheim’s, with the permission of the artist’s widow.⁵⁵I.Q. van Regteren Altena et al. Johan G. Wertheim 1898-1977, exh. cat. Laren (Singer Museum) 1978, no. 8 and p. 20 (fig.); J. Teeuwisse, E.L. Wouthuysen and C. van Blommestein, Joh. G. Wertheim, The Hague 2015, no. P14-I. Also in the museum’s collection is a bronze portrait of Van Schendel – portrayed towards the end of his life – by Arthur Spronken, cast in 1975 BK-1975-71.

Wertheim’s portrait of Arthur van Schendel is rendered in a sensitively realistic and austere style, clearly conveying the French neoclassicism of Despiau and Maillol present in his work at this time. In the late 1920s, this artistic movement – ‘retour à l’ordre’ (a return to order) – strongly flourished as a counter-reaction to abstract modernism. This new form of French classicism also found its supporters in the Netherlands, with a number of sculptors, including Wertheim, paying frequent visits to Paris during these years.⁶⁶See for example J. Teeuwisse, Han Wezelaar statuaire, Zwolle 2003, pp. 64-80.

Various points of agreements can especially be discerned in the work of Charles Despiau (1874-1946), though there exists no documentation confirming that Wertheim ever personally met the older and by then internationally successful French sculptor. Like the Van Schendel bust, Despiau’s portraits have a soft and placid skin texture, with compositions founded on simple volumes. Also noteworthy when comparing Wertheim’s bust to a number of the Frenchman’s portraits from the 1920s is a similarity in the treatment of the eyes: simple, sharply delineated eyelids with no clear indication of the pupils, thus resulting in a certain staring, semi-absent quality in the portrayal of the sitter. Examples include Despiau’s various busts of women: e.g. Mrs. Leopold Lévy (1923), Mrs. Henry de Waroquier (1927), Berthe Simon (1928), Mrs. Stone (1927) and Maria Lamy (1929).⁷⁷L. Deshairs, C. Despiau, Paris 1930, figs. 23, 31, 36, 38, 44. Wertheim’s Van Schendel portrait has the same staring expression, an aspect perhaps in part motivated by the sitter’s eye defect.

After the Second World War, Wertheim remained active as a portraitist. Nevertheless, his style became freer and more expressive. In 1951, he was commissioned by the city of Amsterdam to do a posthumous, half-length bust of Van Schendel’s father, which today still stands in the Leidsebosje garden near the city’s Leidseplein square.⁸⁸I.Q. van Regteren Altena et al. Johan G. Wertheim 1898-1977, exh. cat. Laren (Singer Museum) 1978, p. 8. J. Teeuwisse, E.L. Wouthuysen and C. van Blommestein, Joh. G. Wertheim, The Hague 2015, no. P48-I. Wertheim’s idealism also led to an important national enterprise to promote art education: the founding of the organization Openbaar Kunstbezit, a new and modern form of art education oriented to a broad section of the population, chiefly via loose-leaf publications on artworks and radio talks presented by specialists in art and art history.⁹⁹J. Teeuwisse, E.L. Wouthuysen and C. van Blommestein, Joh. G. Wertheim, The Hague 2015, pp. 90-95.

Frits Scholten, 2026

Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 28 (1981), pp. 101, 104 (fig. 2); I.Q. van Regteren Altena et al. Johan G. Wertheim 1898-1977, exh. cat. Laren (Singer Museum) 1978, p. 6 and no. 8 (fig. on p. 20); J. Teeuwisse, E.L. Wouthuysen and C. van Blommestein, Joh. G. Wertheim, The Hague 2015, pp. 4, 108 (note 237), 123 (no. P14-II)

F. Scholten, 2026, 'Johan G. Wertheim and Johan Sterenberg, Portrait of Arthur François Emile van Schendel (1910-1979), Paris, 1931', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20046931