The support is a vertically grained oak plank with bevels on all sides. The off-white ground layer is thin. A loose underdrawing defining the main composition lines can be seen in the sitter’s face, beard and collar. The paint was applied smoothly and transparently, especially in the sitter’s face.

Poor. The paint in the sitter’s face and collar is severely abraded. There are losses and discoloured retouchings along the edges. At the middle of the panel’s left edge there is an old damaged area caused by woodworms. The varnish layer, which was applied unevenly, is very yellow.

…; bequeathed to the museum by Mrs Johanna Balguerie, née Van Rijswijk, widow of Daniel Balguerie, Amsterdam, 1823¹¹RANH, ARM, IS, inv. 11, no. 51, (1 March 1823); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 36, pp. 140-41 (30 March 1823); RANH, ARM, IS, inv. 11, no. 56, (17 April 1823); RANH, ARM, IS, inv. 11, no. 57 (8 April 1823); RANH, ARM, Kop, inv. 36, p. 143 (8 May 1823).

Object number: SK-A-587

Credit line: J. Balguerie-van Rijswijk Bequest, Amsterdam

Several of the sitters in the 22 family portraits in the Balguerie-Van Rijswijk Bequest remain unidentified, including this one. According to the inscription on the back, the man set in the oval brown surround is Pieter Rijswijck (1615-87), but that identification is probably incorrect, as was already being pointed out in the museum’s 1903 catalogue.²²Coll. cat. 1903, p. 18. The type of ruff was worn in the first quarter of the 17th century,³³The date of c. 1610 in coll. cat. 1976, p. 656, is a little over-precise. so the sitter would have been born around the middle of the 16th century. It is not clear whether the portrait came from the paternal side of the testatrix’s family, the Van Rijswijks, or the maternal side, the Rijswijcks.⁴⁴According to the CBG database, the coat of arms in the top left corner is that of the Van Rijswijk family.

It is also very much the question whether the portrait was painted from life. Its rather sketchy nature and the lack of individualized features suggests that it is a posthumous portrait or even a copy, possibly made much later.

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. 410.

1880, p. 383, no. 444 (as Portrait of Pieter Rijswijck); 1887, p. 71, no. 567 (as Portrait of Pieter Rijswijck); 1903, p. 18, no. 173; 1976, p. 656, no. A 587; 2007, no. 410

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'anonymous, Portrait of a Man of the Rijswijck or Van Rijswijk Family, c. 1610 - c. 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025873