Portrait of a Family

Support The support consists of two pieces of similar plain-weave canvas with a horizontal seam at approx. 40 cm from the bottom, and has been glue-lined. All tacking edges have been removed.
Preparatory layers The single, yellowish beige ground extends up to the current edges of the support. It consists of red, black and white 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 composition was built up from the back to the front leaving reserves, the edges of which are occasionally visible between the compositional elements. Impasto and glazes were used for the fruits and the jewellery. The designs in the borders of the lace collars and the cuffs were created by scratching in the wet paint.
Michel van de Laar, 2023

Poor. There are 18 vertical fold lines in the canvas, indicating that it was either rolled up or folded prior to its lining. The cohesion of the support with the lining canvas is locally poor, as is the attachment of the ground and paint layers to the support. The painting is severely damaged, and discoloured retouchings and overpainted passages are present throughout. Most of the retouchings, overpaint and yellowed varnish were removed from the man’s face and its immediate surroundings. This area received no further treatment and was left in its damaged state.

…; donated by Adriaan Justus Enschedé (1829-1896), Haarlem, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 145), with SK-A-854, 1874; transferred to the museum, 1885¹¹NHA, ARM, IS, inv. 165, no. 70 (11 February 1885).

ObjectNumber: SK-A-853

Credit line: Gift of A.J. Enschedé, Haarlem

This family portrait by Jacob van der Merck was one of two paintings that Adriaan Justus Enschedé, city archivist of Haarlem, presented to the forerunner of the Rijksmuseum in December 1874.⁶⁶See Provenance. The Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst was still being governed at the time by the Commission of State Advisers for Monuments of History and Art, of which Enschedé had become a member shortly before. The donation was discussed at a committee meeting on 14 January 1875,⁷⁷NHA, Inventaris van de Commissiearchieven van het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken, Commissie voor Monumenten van Geschiedenis en Kunst, no. 1, Notulen van de Commissie, 9 April 1874-10 June 1875. and according to the minutes Enschedé had discovered both works in Amsterdam. The portrait by Van der Merck ‘lay flat on the floor to prevent peat getting into the cracks in the floor’, and the other painting, which was a copy after Abraham Liedts’s likeness of Admiral Pieter Florisz,⁸⁸SK-A-854. was wrapped around the slabs of peat. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the location, so the earlier provenance of the pictures cannot be traced.⁹⁹In P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: A Completely Illustrated Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1976, p. 346, no. A 854, it is therefore mistakenly stated that the admiral’s portrait was acquired by the museum at the sale, H.J. Broers, Utrecht (Beijers), 8 March 1873, p. 3 (without lot number). Van der Merck’s canvas was thus in a very battered condition when it entered the Nederlandsch Museum and it was then probably restored. Nothing was said about its state when it was transferred from The Hague to Amsterdam in 1885.¹⁰¹⁰NHA, ARM, IS, inv. 165, no. 70 (11 February 1885.). However, there is a note in the Rijksmuseum’s inventory book that it was partly overpainted. Today the man’s head has disappeared completely. It was very probably decided to rectify the previous intervention but that was done too radically.¹¹¹¹See Condition.

Despite its sorry condition, the work does give a reasonable idea of Van der Merck’s qualities as a portraitist. The balustrade and other architectural details suggest that the family is on the terrace of a building resembling a pavilion. The married couple are seated, with a younger woman, probably a daughter, standing on the right. It was not uncommon for companies to be depicted outdoors surrounded by greenery in the seventeenth century, but in the 1650s artists like Bartholomeus van der Helst increasingly placed them on a terrace with columns and other structural elements in the background, sometimes combined with a drapery. Anthony van Dyck had been using motifs like that in his portraits since the 1620s. The vertical shape behind Van der Merck’s male sitter might have been intended to be a circular pillar like the one in the top right corner, but it is no longer clearly distinguishable. Although the original effect may have been spoiled by wear, a clumsy handling of architectural details is also found in Van der Merck’s 1660 likeness of Willem van der Rijt and his family.¹²¹²Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal; illustrated in M.L. Wurfbain, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal: Catalogus van schilderijen en tekeningen, coll. cat. Leiden 1983, p. 214, no. 303. There, too, he included a drapery with tassels, and judging by a painting he made of the governors of the Leiden Loridan almshouse it was a favourite device of his in group portraits.¹³¹³Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal; illustrated in M.L. Wurfbain, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal: Catalogus van schilderijen en tekeningen, coll. cat. Leiden 1983, p. 214, no. 300a. He also employed it in still lifes from time to time.¹⁴¹⁴An example can be found in Leiden, Museum De Lakenhal; illustrated in M.L. Wurfbain, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal: Catalogus van schilderijen en tekeningen, coll. cat. Leiden 1983, p. 214, no. 592.

The man shown here is using his right hand to indicate or activate something outside the painting. It would not have been the couple’s children, as is the case in Van der Merck’s far larger family portrait of 1653 in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.¹⁵¹⁵That work measures 225 x 268 cm; illustrated in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, p. 549. Although there is no cusping visible, indicating that the picture may have been cut down,¹⁶¹⁶See Technical notes. it is not certain that the composition has indeed been cropped. At any rate, the position of the signature on the cornice of the pillar does not give the impression that the canvas has been substantially trimmed on the left, the side the man is pointing at.

According to the transfer list of 1885, the painting bears the year ‘1654’.¹⁷¹⁷List of works transferred from the Nederlandsch Museum in 1885: NHA, ARM, IS, inv. 165, no. 70 (11 February 1885). That was adopted at first in the museum’s inventory book but later changed to ‘165.’, which is how it was catalogued in 1976.¹⁸¹⁸P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: A Completely Illustrated Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1976, p. 376, no. A 853. Not the slightest trace of any date can now be seen. Overzealous cleaning has removed it entirely, along with the last four letters of the signature. However, the reported year of 1654 would fit in well with the women’s dresses, especially the starched, lace-trimmed falling whisk collars and the wide, short cylindrical cuffs.¹⁹¹⁹J.H. der Kinderen-Besier, Spelevaart der mode: De kledij onzer voorouders in de zeventiende eeuw, Amsterdam 1950, pp. 148-49. If the date was read correctly at the time, the work is from the artist’s Hague period.

The seated woman has a blue-and-white bowl in her lap filled with citrus fruit and is holding a lemon in her right hand, which could be a reference to marital fidelity in this context.²⁰²⁰M. Levi d’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting, Florence 1977, p. 207. Since such products were very expensive at the time, their combination with the dish of Chinese porcelain proclaims the wealth of the patron.²¹²¹M. Beuchert, Symbolik der Pflanzen, Frankfurt 1999, p. 354; oral and written communication, Constance L.H. Scholten, RKD. Van der Merck’s talents for still lifes would have come in handy here.

Richard Harmanni, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

1903, p. 171, no. 1539; 1976, p. 376, no. A 853

Richard Harmanni, 2023, 'Jacob Fransz. van der Merck, Portrait of a Family, c. 1650 - c. 1659', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9070