Portrait of Jacob Pergens (?-1681)

The support is an oak, vertically grained panel, consisting of three planks, and is bevelled on all sides. The off-white ground was applied thinly. The sitter’s face, collar and hands were prepared in a light grey dead colour. The paint was applied smoothly and opaquely, with brushstrokes visible in the tablecloth and the sitter’s hair.

Fair. There are discoloured retouchings along the panel joins and in the background, and pinpoint losses throughout. The varnish has yellowed.

Oak box frames, painted black with gilt sight edges and transitional sections¹¹De Bruyn Kops 1984, p. 53, fig. A 6; De Bruyn Kops in Amsterdam 1984 b, p. 81; De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 71, fig. A 6; De Bruyn Kops in Van Thiel/ De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 127.

...; documented at Kasteel Popkensburg in an 18th-century manuscript;²²RAU, PA 26, Des Tombe archive, inv. no. 18, ‘Genealogieën, genealogische en heraldische aantekeningen betreffende de familie van Citters en aanverwante families, (17e-19e eeuw): Boudaen (Courten), Walleran Sandra, Fourmenois, Buteux, Hoeufft’, no. 16 or 17: ‘1619’; no. 16 or 17: ‘1619’. ? by descent through the families Boudaen Courten, Van Citters, Verheije van Citters, De Witte van Citters, to Jonkheer Jacob de Witte van Citters (1817-76), The Hague; by whom bequeathed to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. nos. 3247, 3248), 1876; transferred to the museum, as by an anonymous artist, 1885

ObjectNumber: SK-A-918

Credit line: Jonkheer J. de Witte van Citters Bequest, The Hague

These portraits of Jacob Pergens (shown here) and his first wife, Anna Boudaen Courten (SK-A-919), are companion pieces.⁵⁵The coat of arms on the back of both panels is that of the Pergens family, see CBG database. See the entry on SK-A-2068 for the second coat of arms on the portrait of Anna Boudaen Courten. Jacob Pergens, whose date of birth is unknown, was a businessman from Cologne. In London, on 15 July 1619, he married Anna, the daughter of Matthias Boudaen and Margarita Courten (SK-A-2073). Her brother Pieter noted down in the family chronicle that the only child of his sister’s marriage, a little girl called Margarita, died young.⁶⁶Wuestman 2005, p. 53. Anna Boudaen Courten died in 1622 at the age of 23.⁷⁷Her date of death is given as 1621 on the back of her portrait, but it is clear from Boudaen Courten’s biography that his sister must have died in 1622; see Wuestman 2005, p. 60, note 20. Pergens remarried twice, first to Maria de Wale Rogiers in 1633, and after her death to Leonora Bartolotti in 1640. He himself died in Amsterdam in 1681.⁸⁸See Leonhardt 1979, pp. 72-76, for his life in Amsterdam.

Pergens and his wife are shown three-quarter length standing beside a table. The portraits, which are dated 1619, are still in their original frames,⁹⁹See Original framing. and were probably painted to mark their marriage that same year. Both Pergens and his wife are wearing costly lace ruffs and cuffs, and clothes made from very expensive materials. Anna’s lace with floral motifs is English,¹⁰¹⁰Oral communication, Patricia Wardle, 2004. as is her dress with its V-neck and her type of hat. She has a wedding ring on her right index finger. Bianca du Mortier believes that the brooch in Anna’s hair, a heart pierced by arrows, was a wedding present.¹¹¹¹Oral communication, 2004. See Gans 1961, p. 108, for this and similar ornaments for the hair.

In style and composition these pendants are closely related to the portraits of Pieter Boudaen Courten (SK-A-2068) and his wife Catharina Fourmenois (SK-A-2069) of the same year, and can likewise be attributed to Salomon Mesdach of Middelburg. They may have been made during a stay in the town, where Anna Boudaen Courten’s brother and uncle lived.

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 176.

Wuestman 2005, p. 43

1887, p. 74, nos. 606, 607 (Dutch school); 1903, p. 171, nos. 1540, 1541 (as Mesdach); 1934, p. 183, nos. 1540, 1541 (as Mesdach); 1960, p. 201, nos. 1540, 1541 (as Mesdach); 1976, p. 376, nos. A 918, A 919 (as Mesdach); 2007, no. 176

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'attributed to Salomon Mesdach, Portrait of Jacob Pergens (?-1681), 1619', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9076