Portrait of a Collector, possibly Constantijn Sennepart (1625-1703)

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping is clearly visible at the top.
Preparatory layers The triple ground extends up to the current edges of the support. The first, thick layer is bright red and consists of fine red and some larger dark red and small ochre-coloured pigment particles. The second, thin ground is pinkish and contains large white and dark red pigment particles. The third layer is also pinkish but thicker, and is composed of less red pigment and comprises some black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. The figure seems to have been reserved in the background, as the paint of the curtain follows his outlines and only a few strands of hair were applied over it. The black coat holds the white band in reserve and extends partly over the red carpet, indicating that the table was initially planned to be wider. A cross-section shows that the carpet consists of a very bright red underlayer on which the pattern was added in various colours. The paint layers were thickly but very smoothly applied and display almost no brushstrokes or impasto.
Anna Krekeler, 2022

Fair. Several small paint losses are visible along the edges. These areas, as well as the face and the coat, show discoloured retouchings. Many small, transparent white particles protrude above the paint surface throughout. The varnish has yellowed severely and saturates poorly.

...; the dealer Julius Böhler, Munich, 1912;¹¹Hofstede de Groot notes, RKD....; collection Paul von Schwabach (1867-1938), Berlin, 1914;²²Hofstede de Groot notes, RKD....; donated by Kurt (1887-1951) and Adolf Arnhold (1884-1950), Dresden and London, to the museum, 1939

ObjectNumber: SK-A-3281

Credit line: Gift of K. Arnhold, London and A. Arnhold, London

The last two digits of the date of this portrait are no longer clearly visible. In the past the year has been read as both ‘1662’ and ‘1665’.⁴⁴Hofstede de Groot notes, RKD, and P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: A Completely Illustrated Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1976, p. 430, no. A 3281, respectively. The latter accords better with the large rectangular white band worn by the sitter and the ribbons on the sleeve of his outer garment.⁵⁵Compare the sitter’s clothing with, for example, that worn by Michiel Servaesz Nouts in his 1670 portrait by Lodewijk van der Helst in the Amsterdam Museum; illustrated in N. Middelkoop, G. Reichwein and J. van Gent, De oude meesters van de stad Amsterdam: Schilderijen tot 1800, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum) 2008, p. 150. Unusually for a work of such a diminutive size, the support is a rather roughly woven canvas. The paint, though, was applied very smoothly, without visible brushstrokes or impasto,⁶⁶See Technical notes. as if Adriaen van Ostade wanted to demonstrate that he could achieve the same meticulous effect on canvas as he did in the pictures he executed on panel and copper in this period.⁷⁷For a work on copper see, for example, SK-C-200.

Catalogued by the Rijksmuseum in 1976 as a portrait of a scholar, Van Ostade’s picture can be more aptly described as a likeness of a collector, for with his left hand he is holding open a page in a so-called kunstboek showing a drawing or print that has been bound or pasted into it. The other volumes on the table and in the bookcase behind the sitter are probably also ‘art books’. Seventeenth-century painted portraits of Dutch collectors depicted as such are very rare. In fact, only a few other examples can be given: one by Gerrit Dou of his patron Pieter Spiering with his wife and daughter, known only from a description in Joachim von Sandrart’s Teutsche Academie,⁸⁸J.G. van Gelder, ‘Caspar Netscher’s portret van Abraham van Lennep uit 1672’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 70 (1978), pp. 227-38, esp. pp. 227-30. three by Caspar Netscher, including his 1672 Portrait of Abraham van Lennep,⁹⁹Paris, Fondation Custodia; illustrated in M. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting, Doornspijk 2002, pl. 162. See also J.G. van Gelder, ‘Caspar Netscher’s portret van Abraham van Lennep uit 1672’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum 70 (1978), pp. 227-38. For Netscher’s portraits of collectors see Wieseman (op. cit.), pp. 108-10. and one by Richard Brakenburgh, dated 1688.¹⁰¹⁰Sale, London (Christie’s South Kensington), 2 November 2005, no. 14. With thanks to Jaap van der Veen for bringing this painting to my attention. The composition of both the present likeness by Van Ostade and Netscher’s of Abraham van Lennep, in which the sitter is shown seated with an open book at a table in front of a bookcase, belongs to the pictorial tradition of the scholar’s portrait that can be traced back in the northern Netherlands to late-sixteenth-century works by the brothers Pieter and Aert Pietersz.¹¹¹¹Ekkart in N. Middelkoop (ed.), Kopstukken: Amsterdammers geportretteerd 1600-1800, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum) 2002-03, p. 155. A series of five engraved effigies of Amsterdam scholars published by Cornelis Danckerts around 1641 led to an increased popularity of the type in the second half of the century.¹²¹²J. van der Veen, ‘Eenvoudig en stil: Studeerkamers in zeventiende-eeuwse woningen, voornamelijk te Amsterdam, Deventer en Leiden’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 51 (2000), pp. 136-71, esp. p. 161. As far as we know, Van Ostade is the only Haarlem artist to have employed this formula. He used a similar design for his single-figure genre scenes of doctors and lawyers seated at tables. His earliest dated picture of this kind is from 1664,¹³¹³Lawyer Sharpening a Quill Pen, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum; illustrated in G. Cavalli-Björkman, C. Fryklund and K. Side´n, Dutch and Flemish Paintings, II: Dutch Paintings c. 1600-c. 1800, coll. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2005, p. 370, no. 383. which indicates that the composition of the Rijksmuseum Portrait of a Collector probably developed out of these genre paintings.

The identity of one of the early collectors of Van Ostade’s works on paper is known from Houbraken’s account of the artist’s life. According to him, Van Ostade made a number of his famous watercolour drawings in the house of Constantijn Sennepart (1625-1703) in Amsterdam, after the latter had convinced him in 1662 (1672 is meant) to abandon the trip to Lübeck he was planning in order to evade the advancing French army.¹⁴¹⁴A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, p. 347. While Houbraken’s account of the aborted journey is probably a tall tale, the catalogue of the posthumous sale of Sennepart’s art cabinet in 1704 confirms that he owned various works by Van Ostade.¹⁵¹⁵Sale, Constantijn Sennepart, Amsterdam (J. Somer), 1 April 1704; for the objects in this sale see also M.C. Plomp, Hartstochtelijk verzameld: 18de-eeuwse Hollandse verzamelaars van tekeningen en hun collecties, exh. cat. Haarlem (Teylers Museum)/Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 2001, pp. 34, 82, 86, 95. The first item recorded is an ‘art book’ containing ‘36 drawings by Van Ostade, uncommonly bold of colour, consisting of peasant companies, taverns and many other scenes; his very best manner’. All told, the catalogue lists 11 of such volumes containing drawings, 25 with prints, including examples by Van Ostade himself and others executed after his designs by Cornelis Visscher, as well as 15 ‘bound works’, such as ‘Van der Heyden’s description of the hose fire appliance, with figures’. One of the entries gives an idea of what these kunstboeken looked like: ‘Art books bound in many sizes, in English, French, vellum and Russian leather bindings’. Also up for sale were ‘2 large oak cabinets with shelves and drawers for storing art books etc.’.

Constantijn Sennepart, who was a silk merchant by profession, also dealt in art. The collector Sybrand Feitama Sr, for example, acquired a number of watercolour drawings by Van Ostade from him in 1695.¹⁶¹⁶B. Broos, ‘“Notitie der Teekeningen van Sybrand Feitama”: De boekhouding van drie generaties verzamelaars van oude Nederlandse tekenkunst’, Oud Holland 98 (1984), pp. 13-39, esp. pp. 25-26. Sennepart must also have owned a sizable library and quantity of paintings. They were inherited by his daughter Geertruit in 1706 along with his house, called ‘Vergulde Son’ (Gilded Sun), on Prinsengracht, and other property.¹⁷¹⁷C.G.M. Smit, ‘De familie van Pieter Langendijk (1683-1756): Langendijk, Nieuwenhuis en (aangetrouwd) Sennepart’, De Nederlandsche Leeuw 103 (1986), cols. 378-425, esp. col. 410. Unfortunately, the 11 July 1704 inventory of Constantijn Sennepart’s possessions has not been preserved. The library was valued at 1,090 and the pictures at 3,485 guilders in a document of 1721.¹⁸¹⁸C.G.M. Smit, ‘De familie van Pieter Langendijk (1683-1756): Langendijk, Nieuwenhuis en (aangetrouwd) Sennepart’, De Nederlandsche Leeuw 103 (1986), cols. 378-425, esp. col. 410.

The 1704 auction catalogue also lists a number of miniatures. Not included was one now in the Bibliothèque Wallonne in Leiden which has an inscription on the reverse signed by Geertruit Sennepart and stating that it is a likeness of her late father (fig. a). The sitter in Van Ostade’s portrait resembles the depicted man enough to warrant a tentative identification as Constantijn Sennepart.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

A. Ebert, Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, pp. 96, note 542, 128-29, 210, 216

1976, p. 430, no. A 3281 (as Portrait of a Scholar)

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Adriaen van Ostade, Portrait of a Collector, possibly Constantijn Sennepart (1625-1703), c. 1665', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4898