Portrait of Pieter Claesz Boelens (1582-1627)

The panel is a single, vertically grained oak plank bevelled on all sides. It is possible that the panel was sawn down a little, leading to the loss of bits of paint on the front. The ground is whitish. The paint is thick and opaque. A striking feature is the accents applied at a late stage, many of which have beaded up on the underlying layer. There are small pentimenti in the cheek.

Good. The grain of the wood is clearly visible through the paint.

...; gift of H.J. Heshuysen to the Rijksarchief, Haarlem;¹¹Label on the frame. transferred to the museum, 1934;²²Note RMA. on loan to the Westfries Museum, Hoorn, since 1959

ObjectNumber: SK-A-3217

Pieter Boelens (1582-1627) was the son of Claes Allertsz Boelens (1550-1615).³³For Pieter Boelens’s biography see Elias I, 1903, p. 115. It is not known who painted this portrait. It is probably a copy after a prototype that is now lost that was executed in 1627, according to the inscription on the present painting, that is to say the year of Pieter Boelens’s death. The execution is rather rudimentary. Strikingly, at a late stage in the painting process the artist applied rather coarse accents in the underlying layer. The falling ruff has little volume and was quite harshly executed. The copyist responsible for this portrait probably also executed the one of Claes Allertsz Boelens (SK-A-3216). The prototype may have been the Portrait of Pieter Boelens, that was destroyed by fire while in the collection of W. del Court van Krimpen in Haarlem.⁴⁴Moes I, 1897, p. 93, no. 790; note IB.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 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. 427.

1976, p. 659; no. A 3217; 2007, no. 427

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'anonymous, Portrait of Pieter Claesz Boelens (1582-1627), in or after 1627', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9596