watermark: upper part of a foolscap; cf. Laurentius 2007, II, nos. 431 (Hulst: 1658) and 497 (The Hague: 1666)

…; from the dealer B. Houthakker, Amsterdam, fl. 25, to the museum (L. 2228), 1912

Object number: RP-T-1912-41

The inscription refers to the little boy seated on the ground, a hornbook in his hand, intensely eyeing the viewer. As noted, in April 1661 he was four years old. An older boy standing behind him, clutching the hand of another figure, is drawn in a sketchier way, with two other figures suggested only by contours.

This is a detail from a larger, finished composition made by the artist five years earlier, in 1656, now preserved in the University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque (inv. no. 84.10).¹¹J. Giltaij, Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697). Schilder en architect, Zwolle 2017, no. T25. That drawing is a portrait historié of a yet unidentified family, consisting of father, mother, a then eight-year old girl and a boy of two, with the present drawing’s little boy missing – to no surprise, as he was born only in April 1657. The Rijksmuseum drawing appears to be an addendum, focussing on the younger boy, as De Bray redrew only the part of the scene where he was to be fitted in, along with neighbouring figures. These are his brother, grown into a seven-year-old, given in the same posture as in 1656, still clasping his sister’s hand, and the mother, sitting on the right – only rudimentarily indicated – gesticulating towards her children. The father is completely missing (the shoe at the left belonging to the elder girl), as is the woman at the right of the finished drawing, being a neighbour boasting with jewels, to whom the mother of the family is showing her children as her most precious belongings.²²This idea quotes the Roman legend of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi; cf. Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia, IV.4.4, as was first noted by A. Blankert, ‘Vrouw “Winter” door Caesar van Everdingen’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 39 (1991), no.4, p. 514. A Dutch translation was published with Joannes Janssonius in Amsterdam, 1647. Of that neighbour, in the present drawing, only a piece of her dress is visible to the right, resting on the trompe l’oeil plinth.

Although no corresponding painting is known, the finished drawing was probably not made as an autonomous work of art as suggested by Giltaij.³³J. Giltaij, Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697). Schilder en architect, Zwolle 2017, pp. 45, 252, 273. It was instead probably a ricordo after a now lost work of art, to which apparently the youngest boy needed to be added,⁴⁴Similar to other cases known in Dutch seventeenth-century portrait painting; cf. R. Ekkart and C. van den Donk, Lief en leed. Realisme en fantasie in Nederlandse familiegroepen uit de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw, exh. cat. Enschede (Rijksmuseum Twenthe) 2018, pp. 136-43. as is documented by the present sheet. Not only is the presumed painted model unknown, but also the family’s identity. The only hints are the birthdates noted on the finished drawing, suggesting a family whose father was born on 30 April 1602, the mother on 29 March 1625, the daughter on 27 June 1648, the older son on 13 May 1654 and the younger son in April 1657.

Annemarie Stefes, 2019

J.W. von Moltke, ‘Jan de Bray’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 11/12 (1938-39), pp. 421-523, no. Z 163; A. van Suchtelen, ‘Nieuwe gezichten in oude taferelen’, Kunstschrift 51 (2007), no. 1, p. 35 (fig. 39); J. Giltaij, Jan de Bray (1626/1627-1697). Schilder en architect, Zwolle 2017, pp. 43, 44, 45, 253-54, 273-73, no. T45

A. Stefes, 2019, 'Jan de Bray, Portrait of Two Boys with their Sister and Mother, Haarlem, 1661-05-16', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200119009