Support The plain-weave canvas, with an average of approx. 12.9 horizontal (weft) by 13.5 vertical (warp) threads per centimetre, has been glue-paste lined. The tacking edges at the top and bottom and on the right have been trimmed, the one on the left has been preserved. There is a selvedge on the left. Cusping is present on all sides. Judging by the crack pattern parallel to the edges the bars of the original strainer were approx. 4-4.5 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The triple ground extends up to the current edges of the canvas at the top and bottom and on the right, and over the left tacking edge. The first, brick-red layer consists mostly of fine red pigment particles with a small amount of black, transparent and coarse white pigment particles. The second, light pink layer contains fine and coarse white pigment particles with an addition of red, black and fine earth pigment particles. The third, whitish-pink layer has a similar composition but with slightly more white pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography and infrared photography revealed two types of underdrawing, parts of which are also faintly visible to the naked eye. Sketchy lines in a dry medium describe the hair, chin, the lace in the girl’s left sleeve and the position of the bracelet. An earlier, wider contour of the dress to the right of the current version was indicated in a wet medium, probably a black paint.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the canvas at the top and bottom and on the right, and almost up to the left tacking edge. The background was applied in two layers. The sitter was left in reserve in the initial, light brown layer. The face was first indicated with translucent browns and further built up wet in wet and from dark to light, with the highlights in the eyes and the orange of the cheeks, chin and forehead as final touches. The dress was laid in with a medium blue and the hands were placed on top, after which dark and lighter blues were added wet in wet to suggest the folds in the dress. Parts of the lace pattern, notably in the bottom right corner of the collar, were incised into the wet paint. The ground was left visible in the dress, lending it a pinkish tone. The second layer of the background, consisting of a thin, translucent dark brown glaze, was applied to suggest depth, and small adjustments were made to contours, sometimes continuing over the finished background. The fan was added and finally the dress was embellished with a subtle pattern in different shades of blue and with gold-coloured trimmings. The paint surface is smooth overall, with a few impasted brushstrokes for the lace, embellishments and highlights.
Anna Krekeler, 2024

A. Krekeler et al., ‘Consistent Choices: A Technical Study of Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck’s Portraits in the Rijksmuseum’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 62 (2014), pp. 2-23

Good. There is a pronounced crack pattern throughout the paint layer. The blue of the dress has faded except for the bottom edge covered by the frame.

…; ? collection Von Hendorff;¹¹O. ter Kuile, ‘Twee portretten uit de zeventiende eeuw in het Rijksmuseum Twenthe te Enschede’, Antiek 3 (1968), pp. 9-13, esp. p. 9; Ekkart in J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, p. 174; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, p. 38. According to H.W. Keiser, Gemäldegalerie Oldenburg, coll. cat. Oldenburg 1966, p. 11, Von Hendorff was a Danish major and ducal postmaster, in which case he would have been Johann Georg von Hendorff (1744-1800). Another candidate is his elder brother Friedrich Wilhelm von Hendorff (1738-1798). ? his posthumous sale, Oldenburg (auction house not known), 1800, to Peter Friedrich Ludwig, Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1755-1829), Augusteum, Oldenburg;²²R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, p. 38. That sale is not documented, however. first documented in his collection in 1805;³³F. von Alten, Verzeichnis der Gemälde, Gypse und Bronzen in der Grossherzoglichen Sammlung zu Oldenburg: Mit einem Anhange der auf den Gemälden befindlichen Monogramme, Bezeichnungen und Inschriften, coll. cat. Oldenburg 1881, p. 86, no. 211. by descent to Friedrich August, Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1852-1931); from whom purchased by Mari Paul Voûte (1856-1928), Amsterdam, through the mediation of the dealer A.W.M. Mensing, in or before 1922;⁴⁴P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘Verkregen met de steun van de Vereniging Rembrandt: 1928 Johannes Verspronck: Portret van een meisje in het blauw’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 31 (1983), pp. 210-11, esp. p. 210; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 7-8. from whom on loan to the museum, 1922-28; from whom, with SK-A-3065 and SK-A-3066, fl. 100,000, to the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1928;⁵⁵P.J.J. van Thiel, ‘Verkregen met de steun van de Vereniging Rembrandt: 1928 Johannes Verspronck: Portret van een meisje in het blauw’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 31 (1983), pp. 210-11, esp. p. 210. The sum of fl. 100,000 was actually paid for Rembrandt’s Old Woman Reading (SK-A-3066), the other two paintings being donations; see P. Hecht, 125 jaar openbaar kunstbezit met steun van de Vereniging Rembrandt, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) 2008-09, pp. 70-72, 75. donated to the museum by the Vereniging Rembrandt, November 1928

Object number: SK-A-3064

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

‘The Girl in Blue’, as this work has become known, is one of the finest portraits of a child in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, and is an undoubted Verspronck masterpiece.⁸⁸On Dutch children’s portraits see J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, and on those by Verspronck, R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 40-41. Its attractiveness is due mainly to the girl’s blue damask dress trimmed with gold lace and the lifelike rendering of her face.⁹⁹On the clothing see Kuus in J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, p. 176. Her gaze is serious and her pose dignified, but there is a smile playing around her lips – a combination that typifies many of the artist’s likenesses..

It has so far proved impossible to identify the girl, who is thought to be between six and ten years old. At the beginning of the nineteenth century her portrait was with three others by Verspronck in Oldenburg, in the north-west of Germany. Two of them, companion pieces of a husband and wife from 1640 and 1641, are the same size as the present picture.¹⁰¹⁰Enschede, Rijksmuseum Twenthe; illustrated in O. ter Kuile, ‘Twee portretten uit de zeventiende eeuw in het Rijksmuseum Twenthe te Enschede’, Antiek 3 (1968), pp. 9-13, esp. pp. 10-11. The woman is in the same pose as the girl and is also holding a feathered fan. It has long been assumed that the three paintings belong together and that the couple are the girl’s parents. The fourth portrait by Verspronck in the Oldenburg collection is dated 1645 and shows a male sitter,¹¹¹¹F. von Alten, Verzeichnis der Gemälde, Gypse und Bronzen in der Grossherzoglichen Sammlung zu Oldenburg: Mit einem Anhange der auf den Gema¨lden befindlichen Monogramme, Bezeichnungen und Inschriften, coll. cat. Oldenburg 1881, p. 86, present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, p. 37, fig. 31. probably a member of the same family.¹²¹²R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, p. 44, believes that he is the girl’s grandfather, an opinion that is repeated in R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, p. 36.

It is known that the pendants of the married couple and the 1645 male portrait were bought from the Von Hendorff collection in or before 1800.¹³¹³F. von Alten, Verzeichnis der Gemälde, Gypse und Bronzen in der Grossherzoglichen Sammlung zu Oldenburg: Mit einem Anhange der auf den Gema¨lden befindlichen Monogramme, Bezeichnungen und Inschriften, coll. cat. Oldenburg 1881, p. 86. Almost nothing is known about that collection. Von Hendorff may have been a collector who acquired the portraits, but it is also quite possible that they passed to him by descent as family portraits or came into his possession when he bought a house. It is likely that ‘The Girl in Blue’ belonged to the same owner, but that provenance is not documented.¹⁴¹⁴F. von Alten, Verzeichnis der Gemälde, Gypse und Bronzen in der Grossherzoglichen Sammlung zu Oldenburg: Mit einem Anhange der auf den Gema¨lden befindlichen Monogramme, Bezeichnungen und Inschriften, coll. cat. Oldenburg 1881, p. 86, merely states that the earliest mention of this portrait in the collection dates from 1805. H.W. Keiser, Gemäldegalerie Oldenburg, coll. cat. Oldenburg 1966, p. 11, also speaks of only three portraits by Verspronck from that collection. See also R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, p. 87; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, p. 38. It is not impossible that the family group was originally larger.¹⁵¹⁵R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, p. 39, assumes that there was no pendant to the girl’s portrait because, unlike her presumed mother, she is in the centre of the picture surface.

When the girl’s portrait and those of her alleged parents came on the market in 1922, the Rembrandt Association tried to buy them, but since the seller could not or did not want to wait until the funds became available the pendants of the couple were sold to another party.¹⁶¹⁶O. ter Kuile, ‘Twee portretten uit de zeventiende eeuw in het Rijksmuseum Twenthe te Enschede’, Antiek 3 (1968), pp. 9-13, esp. p. 9. They eventually returned to the Netherlands by a circuitous route and were then acquired by the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede.

It has been suggested that the present painting formed the basis for the 1645 portrait of a girl by Bartholomeus van der Helst now in London.¹⁷¹⁷The National Gallery; illustrated in N. MacLaren, The Dutch School: 1600-1900, coll. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1991, II, pl. 147. Schmidt-Degener in Verslagen omtrent ’s Rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1928 (annual report of the Rijksmuseum), p. 11. Like the young sitter in the Rijksmuseum she is holding an ostrich feather fan, and there are also similarities in her blue dress with gold lace, her hair style and jewellery, although she is a little more sumptuously attired than her Amsterdam counterpart. However, since the two artists worked in different cities it is not very likely that Van der Helst knew Verspronck’s portrait.¹⁸¹⁸On this see R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, pp. 58-59, who calls the similarities ‘no more than superficial’.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck: Leven en werken van een Haarlems portretschilder uit de 17de eeuw, Haarlem 1979, pp. 44, 58, 86-87, no. 33; Ekkart in J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, pp. 174-76, no. 38; R.E.O. Ekkart, Johannes Verspronck and the Girl in Blue, Amsterdam 2009, pp. 7-8, 35-45

1934, p. 300, no. 2537a; 1960, p. 326, no. 2536 A1; 1976, p. 575, no. A 3064

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Johannes Verspronck, Portrait of a Girl Dressed in Blue, 1641', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200108377