watermark: none

...; ? collection Mattheus Verheyden (1700-77), The Hague;¹¹According to an inscription on the verso. ...; sale, Stephen Hendrik de la Sablonière (1825-88, Kampen) and Cornelius Ekama (1824-91, Haarlem), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 30 June 1891, no. 167, fl. 195, to the dealer H.J. Valk (‘Valk S’), probably for Carl Valentin Schöffer (1841-1915), Amsterdam and Scheveningen;²²Copy RKD; according to the annotation in the sale catalogue. his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 30 May 1893 sqq., no. 283, fl. 206, to the dealer H.J. Valk, Amsterdam;³³Copy RKD. from whom, fl. 236.60, to the museum (L. 2228), 1894

Object number: RP-T-00-453

The present drawing was once pasted on fol. 27 of the so-called ‘Netscher Album’ (inv. no. BI-1894-3720), before being detached and mounted separately, probably circa 1973-75.⁷⁷The first set of ‘00’-numbers in the inventory book (inv. nos. RP-T-00-1 to RP-T-00-599) began to be assigned in 1973; inv. nos. RP-T-00-513 to RP-T-00-576 were retroactively inventoried in 1975. It belonged to a group of twelve drawings on blue paper in the album, mostly studies of hands. Two of these, the present drawing and inv. no. RP-T-00-452(V), bear a verso inscription by Mattheus Verheyden (1700-1777), in each case written to the right of a vertical fold. From this, it can be assumed that the present sheet might have served as a folder numbered ’11’, which contained ten hand studies (‘Tien Bladen Handen door A.V. Dijck, Janson van Ceulen, G. Schalken, &c’). The drawings contained in the folder ‘No 11’ were most likely the same ten that were once pasted in consecutive order on fols. 27-36 of the Rijksmuseum’s Netscher Album.⁸⁸Their present inv. nos. are RP-T-00-449, RP-T-00-451, RP-T-00-454, RP-T-00-450, RP-T-00-422, RP-T-00-427, RP-T-00-424, RP-T-00-426, RP-T-00-1155, RP-T-00-425.

J.W. Niemeijer, in his notes on the Netscher Album,⁹⁹RMA, documentation (c. 1970). assigned seven of the ten studies to Anthony van Dyck (1599-1640). The three exceptions were inv. nos. RP-T-00-1155, considered as ‘Anonymous, eighteenth-century’,¹⁰¹⁰In Verheyden’s collection, it may have passed as by Schalcken. the present sheet and inv. no. RP-T-00-454, both of which were given to Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen I.

Theoretically, the present drawing does not have to be by one of the artists mentioned in its verso inscription. In its rather stiff handling of chalk, it resembles inv. nos. RP-T-00-427 and RP-T-00-424(R), both tentatively associated with the son, Cornelis Janson van Ceulen II (1634-1715). At the same time, the father, Jonson van Ceulen I, to whom the sheet was attributed by Alsteens,¹¹¹¹S. Alsteens and A. Eaker (eds.), Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture, exh. cat. New York (Frick Collection) 2016, pp. 268-69. may be excluded for the same reason. The grid-like hatching as it is applied in the corsage is of a different nature than the more nuanced shades found in that artist’s Study of the Hands of a Woman of the Raphoen Family (c. 1646) in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (inv. no. 91.GB.57).¹²¹²S. Alsteens and A. Eaker (eds.), Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture, exh. cat. New York (Frick Collection) 2016, no. 102.

The motif of a woman holding a flower in her left hand, her right given a somewhat artificial gesture with index and middle finger touching the thumb, has not been identified in a painting. In Jonson van Ceulen I’s painted oeuvre, a related gesture of the right hand (turned 90 degrees) is found in the currently untraced Portrait of a Woman Holding up Part of her Pearl Bracelet, dated 1654.¹³¹³Sale, London (Christie’s), 1 April 1966, no. 75. However, it was not an uncommon gesture and is also seen, slightly varied, in the Portrait of Anna Trajectina van Brederode (1625-1672), by an artist from the circle of Johannes Mijtens (c. 1614-1670) in a private collection) or the Portrait of Karel Gerard, 1st Earl of Macclesfield of circa 1656 by Adriaen Hanneman (c. 1604-1671), also in a private collection, England.¹⁴¹⁴Cf. O. ter Kuile, Adriaen Hanneman (1604-1671). Een Haags portretschilder, Alphen aan den Rijn 1976, no. 41. Other portraits by Hanneman, such as Princess Mary (1631-1660), in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (inv. no. PG 1308), also feature slender fingers in a somewhat angular gesture.^[As kindly communicated by Karen Hearn by email, 12 July 2019.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Artists Born between 1580 and 1600, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam 1998, I, under no. 219, p. 104 (n. 4) (as not by Jonson van Ceulen I); S. Alsteens and A. Eaker (eds.), Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture, exh. cat. New York (Frick Collection) 2016, pp. 268-69 (nn. 6, 9) (as by Jonson van Ceulen I)

A. Stefes, 2019, 'circle of Cornelis (I) Jonson van Ceulen, _, c. 1640 - c. 1660', in J. Turner (ed.), _Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200153337