Portret van een jongetje

Willem van der Vliet (eigenhandig gesigneerd), 1638

Portret van een jongetje van anderhalf jaar oud. Staande, ten voeten uit, onder een boom bij een stenen bank waarop een mandje met bloemen. In de linkerhand een rammelaar. Op het hoofd een grote hoed met een brede rand, om de nek een kruis aan een lint.

  • Soort kunstwerkschilderij
  • ObjectnummerSK-A-2577
  • Afmetingenbuitenmaat: diepte 4,5 cm (drager incl. SK-L-3017), drager: hoogte 92,3 cm x breedte 76 cm
  • Fysieke kenmerkenolieverf op paneel

Willem van der Vliet

Portrait of a Boy

1638

Inscriptions

  • signature, date and inscription, bottom left, on the rock:Æta: 1 1/2 aº 1638. / w. van der vliet fecit.

Technical notes

The support consists of three vertically grained oak planks and is bevelled on the bottom. A thin, whitish, rather transparent ground layer is followed by smoothly applied paint layers. A thicker paint was used for the flowers.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 16 februari 2005

Condition

Fair. There are small, old, stable cracks here and there. Some paint is loose along the join at bottom right. There is severe abrasion at various points, a fair number of small paint losses, and quite a lot of discoloured retouching. The varnish is also discoloured.

Conservation

  • M. van de Laar, 1998: loose paint consolidated; retouched and revarnished

Original framing

A stripped oak truncated box frame1De Bruyn Kops 1984, p. 55, fig. C 7; De Bruyn Kops in Amsterdam 1984b, pp. 81, 100; De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 74, fig. C 7; De Bruyn Kops in Van Thiel/De Bruyn Kops 1995, pp. 127, 146.

Provenance

…; collection Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague;2Henkels 1993, pp. 217, 236, 242. from whom on loan to the museum, 1907-11; donated to the museum from his estate, 1912

Object number: SK-A-2577

Credit line: Gift of the heirs of C. Hoogendijk, The Hague

The artist

Biography

Willem van der Vliet (Delft c. 1584 - Delft 1642)

Willem Willemsz van der Vliet was born in Delft around 1584, and lived and worked there all his life. The name of his teacher is not known. He joined the Guild of St Luke in 1615, and became its dean in 1633. He married Maria Jacobsdr Storm van Wena in 1618, but it emerges from a notarized document that he was already a widower by 3 March 1622. It was not until 1636 that he remarried, his bride being Jannitge Heyndricxs van Buyren. He died in Delft on 6 December 1642.

Van der Vliet painted both history and genre pieces in a Caravaggesque style, as well as portraits. His earliest known dated work is A Smoker and a Man Eating of 1624.3Detroit, Institute of Arts; illustrated in Wansink 1987, p. 3, fig. 1. Van der Vliet is also documented as a cloth merchant, but he was probably mainly active as a painter. That is clear not only from his almost unbroken output but also from the sidelines typical of an artist, like authenticating paintings. It is known, for instance, that in 1621 he and Michiel van Mierevelt appraised a copy by the portraitist Hubert Jacobsz Grimani. Van der Vliet was the teacher of his nephew Hendrick Cornelisz van der Vliet (c. 1611-75), another Delft painter.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007

References
Van Bleyswijck 1667, pp. 851-52; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 121; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1934, p. 464; Bok in Utrecht-Braunschweig 1987, p. 345; Wansink 1987, pp. 3-10; Liedtke in New York-London 2001, pp. 56-57

Entry

This little boy is 18 months old, according to the inscription on the stone block on the left. He is wearing a remarkably large hat of a type that was mainly worn by adult men. However, it was also used by women and by young boys, although probably not by girls.4Ekkart in Haarlem-Antwerp 2000, p. 164, no. 33. In his left hand he is holding an ornate jingle-bell. Some authors have seen a symbolic significance in the stone block beside him, the basket of flowers and the ivy twining around the tree on the right. The flowers may allude not only to youth and blossoming, but also to the fleeting nature of life.5De Jongh in Haarlem 1986, pp. 126-27. Ivy stands for love and devotion, while the rocks that are sometimes found in the background of portraits were often associated with constancy.6De Jongh in Haarlem 1986, p. 228.

There are signed portraits in Willem van der Vliet’s oeuvre from 1624 on, when the artist was already 40 years old. Prior to that he concentrated almost entirely on history paintings and genre pieces. He has some 35 portraits to his name, mostly of Delft citizens. In the period 1628-38 he produced a few children’s portraits and this unidentified boy probably came from a well-to-do Delft family. Around his neck he has a chain with a black cross bearing the letters ‘IHS’, indicating that his family was Catholic, of which the town had a relatively large number around this time.7Bok in New York-London 2001, pp. 201-02.

There is a smaller version of this painting, also signed and dated 1638, in which one sees considerably more of the tree on the right.8Panel, 34.3 x 28.5 cm; sale, London (Christie’s, South Kensington), 21 April 1988, no. 189a, as manner of H.C. van der Vliet.

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. 317.

Literature

Ekkart in Haarlem-Antwerp 2000, p. 164, no. 33

Collection catalogues

1934, p. 304, no. 2568a; 1960, p. 330, no. 2568 D 1; 1976, p. 582, no. A 2577; 2007, no. 317

Citation

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Willem van der Vliet, Portrait of a Boy, 1638', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026891

(accessed 7 December 2025 15:38:31).

Footnotes

  • 1De Bruyn Kops 1984, p. 55, fig. C 7; De Bruyn Kops in Amsterdam 1984b, pp. 81, 100; De Bruyn Kops 1995, p. 74, fig. C 7; De Bruyn Kops in Van Thiel/De Bruyn Kops 1995, pp. 127, 146.
  • 2Henkels 1993, pp. 217, 236, 242.
  • 3Detroit, Institute of Arts; illustrated in Wansink 1987, p. 3, fig. 1.
  • 4Ekkart in Haarlem-Antwerp 2000, p. 164, no. 33.
  • 5De Jongh in Haarlem 1986, pp. 126-27.
  • 6De Jongh in Haarlem 1986, p. 228.
  • 7Bok in New York-London 2001, pp. 201-02.
  • 8Panel, 34.3 x 28.5 cm; sale, London (Christie’s, South Kensington), 21 April 1988, no. 189a, as manner of H.C. van der Vliet.