Portrait of Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer (1554-1616)

The support is an oak panel consisting of three vertically grained planks and is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1591. The panel could have been ready for use by 1602, but a date in or after 1608 is more likely. The thin and smooth ground layer is ochre-coloured. The figure was reserved in the grey-green ground. The background was touched up along the outlines once the sitter had been painted. The paint was applied very smoothly, and brushed out wet in wet in the face. The outlines are very hard and taut. The final touches were made with a fine brush, partly over a wet and partly over a dry surface. There is some impasto in the buttons of the clothing and in the highlights of the ruff.

Fair. There is a crack in the panel at lower left. The sitter’s beard is abraded and there are areas of discoloured retouching to the left of the sitter’s head and along the edges. The varnish is also discoloured.

An oak box frame with gilt sight edge and transitional section

? Dirck Hasselaer (1581-1645), Amsterdam, eldest son of Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer and Aecht Pietersdr; ? his daughter Aegje Hasselaer (1617-64), Amsterdam; her husband Henrick Hooft (1617-78), Amsterdam; ? his daughter Brechje Hooft (1640-1721), Amsterdam; ? her son Jan van de Poll (1668-1745), Amsterdam; ? His son Harmen Hendrik van de Poll (1697-1772), Amsterdam; ? his wife Margaretha Trip (1699-1778); her son Jan van de Poll (1721-1801), Amsterdam;¹¹RANH, RMA, IS, inv. no. 168, no. 302 (14 April 1884). his grandson Jan van de Poll (1777-1858), Amsterdam, 1802 (stored with other family portraits in his aunt’s house, Herengracht 479 in Amsterdam); his son Jan Stanislaus Robert van de Poll (1805-88), Arnhem (stored with 25 other family portraits in his sister-in-law’s house, Herengracht 450 in Amsterdam); by whom donated to the museum together with 34 other family portraits, as by Paulus Moreelse, November 1885;²²RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 164, no. 299 (30 December 1884); RANH, ARS, Kop, inv. 289, pp. 62-68, no. 154 (19 November 1885). Provenance reconstructed by Cornelis van der Bas, 2003. on loan to the Amsterdams Historisch Museum since 27 February 1973

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1249

Credit line: Gift of Jonkheer J.S.R. van de Poll, Arnhem

This bust-length portrait shows Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer, captain in the Amsterdam civic guard, magistrate, merchant, shipowner, one of the founders of the Compagnie van Verre (Company of Distant Lands) in 1594 and director of the Dutch East India Company.³³See also the painting Officers and other Guardsmen under the Command of Captain Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer and Lieutenant Jan Gerritsz Hooft, Amsterdam, SK-C-404. He was born in Haarlem, where he was an ensign in the civic guard in 1572-73, during the Spanish siege of the city. He was living in Amsterdam in 1583. After the death of his first wife, Aecht Pietersdr van Persijn van Beverwaerde, he married Margriet Benningh. His eldest son was Dirck Hasselaer.⁴⁴See SK-A-1242 for his portrait by Cornelis van der Voort.

In the 19th century several attempts were made to attribute this painting variously to Hendrick Goltzius,⁵⁵Six 1887, p. 20, note 20. Paulus Moreelse⁶⁶See Provenance. and Werner van den Valckert.⁷⁷Coll. cat. 1897, p. 170. A publication by Van Dam van Isselt in 1919 made it clear that there are three versions of this portrait, the one in Muiden being the superior in quality.⁸⁸Panel, 71 x 55 cm, Rijksmuseum Muiderslot; illustrated in Van Dam van Isselt 1919, p. 181; coll. cat. Muiden 1989, no. 46. Jacob Houbraken made a print after that painting in the 18th century; panel, 45 x 34 cm, with a coat of arms in the upper left corner, private collection, photo IB, no. 37935. The Iconographisch Bureau has a second, unsigned print of the same composition; IB no. 2517.

The Amsterdam work, with its orange flesh tones, the eyes that are much too large and the clumsily painted ruff, is definitely a copy, either of the Muiden portrait or of an earlier version. None of the known versions is signed. At first it was thought that the painting in Muiden was by Werner van den Valckert,⁹⁹Coll. cat. 1934, p. 286. The painting was with the family at the time. In coll. cat. 1903, which was published before the existence of the other versions was known, it was suggested that the work in the Rijksmuseum was based on an original by Van den Valckert. but nowadays it is attributed to Cornelis van der Voort.¹⁰¹⁰Coll. cat. 1976, p. 589, no. 1249; coll. cat. Muiden 1989, no. 46. Van der Voort is indeed the most likely of the two on the evidence of the affinity with the signed portrait of Jan van den Hoek of 1624.¹¹¹¹Illustrated in Six 1911, facing p. 132. According to Van Thiel (1983d, p. 190, d.), the Muiden version is not original either. He believes it to be a copy after an unknown original by Van der Voort. As yet it is impossible to suggest an attribution for the Rijksmuseum painting.

Another problem is the portrait of Hasselaer’s wife Margriet Benningh (SK-A-1245), which is attributed to Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy and is regarded as the pendant of this one. That portrait is a copy of the painting hanging in Muiden as the companion piece to the painting of Hasselaer. That Muiden version is dated 1629, and was thus made 13 years after Hasselaer’s death. Margriet’s portrait was evidently painted to accompany an earlier portrait of her husband, although it is worth noting that she is seated considerably closer to the picture plane than Hasselaer. Since the copies in the Rijksmuseum are clearly by different hands, they were probably painted to commemorate different occasions.

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. 325.

Six 1887, p. 20, note 20; Van Dam van Isselt 1919

1897, p. 170, no. 1469 (as attributed to Werner van den Valkert); 1903, p. 266, no. 2358 (as copy after Werner van den Valckert); 1934, p. 286, no. 2358 (as copy after Werner van den Valckert); 1976, p. 589, no. 1249; 2007, no. 325

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'copy after Cornelis van der Voort, Portrait of Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer (1554-1616), after c. 1610', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7238