Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges, including the original nail holes, have been preserved. Judging by the crack pattern the bars of the original strainer were approx. 4 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends over the tacking edges. The first layer is a reddish orange consisting of mostly orange, some dark red and a few bright red pigment particles. The second, yellowish-white ground is thinner and contains white and some bright yellow pigment particles and a few charcoal black particles.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in a dry medium, consisting of lines indicating the chin, fingers and shadow of the hat on the face.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. The green background was executed first, leaving a neat reserve for the figure, still visible around the hair and the black lace on the shoulders. In several areas the sitter’s contours were adjusted with the background colour, and those of the hands and fingers with the black of the coat. The paint surface is smooth, with the exception of the thickly impasted whites. A red lake was used to indicate the deepest shadows in the mouth and nose.
Michel van de Laar, 2022

Good. The impasted white paint shows some moating due to the lining. A few retouchings are visible along the edges and in the sitter’s right hand. Some wax is present on the surface.

…; collection Jonkheer Jacobus Salomon Hendrik van de Poll (1837-1880), Amsterdam; by whom bequeathed to the museum, as J. van Hemert, with 51 other paintings, 13 April 1880¹¹NHA, ARM, IS, inv. 162, no. 367 (21 June 1880); NHA, ARM, Kop., inv. 39, p. 288, nos. 36 (26 June 1880), 37 (29 June 1880), p. 289, nos. 39 (3 July 1880), 41 (9 July 1880), p. 291, no. 50 (10 September 1880); NHA, ARM, IS, inv. 163, no. 48 (1 June 1881.

Object number: SK-A-693

Credit line: Jonkheer J.S.H. van de Poll Bequest, Amsterdam

Since its first mention in the literature in 1880 the signature on this portrait of a man standing at half length was read as ‘Jan v. Hemert’, a totally fictitious artist, until conservator Michel van de Laar deciphered it as ‘Paulus Hennekyn’ in 2010. The date is hard to read, and the third numeral is now completely illegible, but as the sitter’s costume is in the fashion of the mid-1640s the painting was most probably executed by 1645.⁶⁶The date was wrongly read as ‘1695’ in, respectively, V. de Stuers, ‘Het Kabinet van Jhr. J.S.H. Van de Poll’, Nederlandsche Kunstbode 2 (1880), pp. 243-46, esp. p. 244; J.W. Kaiser, Beschrijving der schilderijen van het Rijksmuseum te Amsterdam, met historische aanteekeningen en facsimilés der naamteekens, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1880, p. 481, no. 129a; G. Kolleman, ‘Roelof Meulenaer: Postmeester tot Antwerpen’, Ons Amsterdam 23 (1971), pp. 114-21, esp. p. 118.

The identification of the sitter as Dirck Hendrick Meulenaer was probably derived from the inscription on the back of the canvas. The painting presumably acquired its present lining, which looks modern, after its arrival in the museum in 1880, and it stands to reason that the text on the reverse was then copied from the original support, which seems to be confirmed by the – slightly different – transcription in the 1880 collection catalogue.⁷⁷‘DIRK HENDRIK MEULENAAR, zoon van HENDRIK DIRK MEULENAAR en ANNETJE HAMANS’. The figure’s identity could certainly be correct, since the Van de Poll Bequest, of which the picture was part, contained more likenesses of members of the Meulenaer family.⁸⁸Ferdinand Bol, Portrait of Roelof Meulenaer, SK-A-683; Nicolaes Maes, Portrait of Marten Meulenaer, SK-A-702. It is no longer possible to reconstruct the route by which the portraits passed by descent to Van de Poll.

Dirck Hendrick Meulenaer was baptized in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 11 June 1620.⁹⁹SA, DTB 5, p. 319. The related certificate lists Hendrick Dircksz Meulenaer and Annetje Harmensdr as his parents, which is in full compliance with the inscription on the reverse and the mention in the 1880 collection catalogue. The couple became betrothed on 9 November 1601 in Amsterdam, where Hendrick worked as a shoemaker.¹⁰¹⁰Written communication, Ruud Koopman, 2008. He was buried in the Oude Kerk on 18 September 1638, and Annetje followed on 4 October 1645. Roelof Meulenaer, whose portrait by Ferdinand Bol is also in the Rijksmuseum,¹¹¹¹SK-A-683 was an elder brother of the here depicted Dirck. The biographical information about the latter is sparse. He is probably the Dirck Meulenaer who is documented as a junior merchant in Nagasaki from November 1646 to November 1649.¹²¹²Diaries Kept by the Heads of the Dutch Factory in Japan/Dagregisters gehouden bij de opperhoofden van de Nederlandsche factorij in Japan, X, Tokyo 2003, p. 20; ibid., XI, 2007, pp. 102, 161; ibid., XII, 2013, p. 11. If so, this painting was made just before he left for Asia, and the journey could have been the reason for commissioning it. Meulenaer may have died in Japan at an early age, for there are no later references to him in either the Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives or those in Amsterdam.

Meulenaer is snappily dressed with a hatband of gold thread over a black silk ribbon. He is wearing a black doublet, trimmed with bobbin lace from Genoa,¹³¹³P. Wardle, ‘Seventeenth-Century Black Silk Lace in the Rijksmuseum’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 33 (1985), pp. 207-25, esp. p. 212. of which a slit in the sleeve reveals its green silk lining and his shirt of spotless white linen. He has slung his cloak around his body. The hand gesture could indicate that he is speaking.¹⁴¹⁴J. Bulwer, Chirologia: Or the Naturall Language of the Hand: Composed of the Speaking Motions, and Discoursing Gestures Thereof: Whereunto is Added Chironomia: Or, the Art of Manuall Rhetoricke: Consisting of the Naturall Expressions, Digested by Art in the Hand, as the Chiefest Instrument of Eloquence, London 1644, pp. 30-31. A slightly earlier example is found in Thomas de Keyser’s 1632 Portrait of a Man,¹⁵¹⁵St Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum; A.J. Adams, The Paintings of Thomas de Keyser (1596/97-1667): A Study of Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam, diss., Harvard University, Cambridge 1985, III, p. 82, no. 43. and Hennekyn could also have borrowed it from likenesses by Bartholomeus van der Helst, with whom he is known to have been in touch.¹⁶¹⁶For example Portrait of David Rijckaert, The Netherlands, private collection; illustrated in J. van Gent, Bartholomeus van der Helst (circa 1613-1670): Een studie naar zijn leven en zijn werk, diss., Utrecht University 2011, II, p. 165, no. 12. The lively composition, with the body slightly off balance, was quite new at the time and remained an exception in Hennekyn’s oeuvre. He and his clients preferred a restrained style, with a faithful resemblance being the prime requirement, together with care being lavished on a convincing rendering of the textures of the clothing. This portrait is a good illustration of that.

Eddy Schavemaker, Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

V. de Stuers, ‘Het Kabinet van Jhr. J.S.H. Van de Poll’, Nederlandsche Kunstbode, 2 (1880), pp. 243-46, esp. p. 244 (as Jan van Hemert); U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XVI, Leipzig 1923, p. 364 (as Jan van Hemert); G. Kolleman, ‘Roelof Meulenaer: Postmeester tot Antwerpen’, Ons Amsterdam 23 (1971), pp. 114-21, esp. p. 118 (as Jan van Hemert)

1880, p. 481, no. 129a (as Jan van Hemert); 1887, p. 61, no. 487 (as Jan van Hemert); 1903, p. 124, no. 1155 (as Jan van Hemert); 1934, p. 127, no. 115 (as Jan van Hemert); 1960, p. 131, no. 1155 (as Jan van Hemert); 1976, p. 270, no. A 693 (as Jan van Hemert)

Eddy Schavemaker, Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Paulus Hennekyn, Portrait of Dirck Hendrick Meulenaer (1620-in or after 1649 ?), c. 1645', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20028031