Modelled on plate glass. Air-dried.

Dehydration cracks in the plasticine. Original oak frame, manufactured in 1915 by the company Fetter, Vijzelstraat, Amsterdam.

Commissioned by the conductor J.W. Mengelberg (1871-1951), the sitter’s husband, 105-107 Van Eeghenstraat, Amsterdam, 1915;¹¹The Hague, Kunstmuseum, Stichting Het Willem Mengelberg-Archief: written communication 16 April 1915 from Pander to Mengelberg. transferred to Mrs Elly Bysterus Heemskerk (1889-1987), Amsterdam, 1945;²²From 1914 to 1951 she was the first violinist of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra and Mengelberg’s personal assistant and secretary, who lived on Van Breestraat, Amsterdam. After Mengelberg’s departure for Switzerland in 1945, she oversaw his possessions in the Netherlands; oral communication Frits Zwart, director NMI, The Hague, to Frits Scholten, 1994. found in her abandoned estate by Mrs. Gilda Swierstra-De Lange, Amsterdam, 1992;³³Oral communication donor to Frits Scholten, 1994. by whom, donated to the museum, 1994

Object number: BK-1994-2

Credit line: Gift of G.P. de Lange-Swierstra

This wafer-thin modelled relief portrait of Mathilde Mengelberg-Wubbe is characteristic of works by Pier Pander (1864-1919), a Frisian sculptor active in Rome from 1890. Renowned chiefly for his work a portraitist of the Dutch beau monde, Pander achieved tremendous success with his portrayal of Queen Wilhelmina used as the effigy on the ten-guilder gold coin of 1898.⁴⁴For Pander, see J.P. Wiersma, Pier Pander een Fries beeldhouwer in Rome (1864-1919), Drachten 1966 and M. Broersma, Pier Pander (1864-1919): Zoektocht naar zuiverheid, Leeuwarden 2007. As his fame grew in the Netherlands, ever-increasing numbers of Dutch tourists began stopping by Pander’s workshop in Rome, located on Via Nomentana, no. 143. The burgeoning popularity of the ‘most famous Dutch sculptor of our day’ eventually necessitated special visitors’ hours even listed in the popular travel guidebook Baedecker’s.⁵⁵J.P. Wiersma, Pier Pander een Fries beeldhouwer in Rome (1864-1919), Drachten 1966, pp. 100, 140. Prominent visitors to the workshop included the Dutch novelist Louis Couperus, who held a great fascination for the serene simplicity of the sculptor’s work and was inspired to write a sonnet cycle (Alba) and a novel (Metamorfoze). Despite living and working in Rome, Panders still spent many of his summers back in his native Netherlands.⁶⁶For Pander see J.P. Wiersma, Pier Pander een Fries beeldhouwer in Rome (1864-1919), Drachten 1966 and M. Broersma, Pier Pander (1864-1919): Zoektocht naar zuiverheid, Leeuwarden 2007.

The woman portrayed in the present relief is Mathilde Mengelberg-Wubbe, wife of Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951), the highly esteemed conductor of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 1914, Pander made a portrait of the renowned conductor. This was initially done in plasticine (plastilina), a then modern kind of modelling putty regularly used by the sculptor.⁷⁷For plasticine, see M.-T. Baudry, La Sculpture: Méthode et vocabulaire, Paris 1978, p. 568. From this now lost plasticine model, Mengelberg had thirteen plasters made – and later an additional twelve – to be presented as gifts to his friends. One plaster is today preserved in the Rijksmuseum (BK-1970-25), with another version carved in marble owned by the Stichting het Willem Mengelberg-Archief (The Hague).⁸⁸F. Scholten, ‘De beeldhouwer Pier Pander en de portretten van Willem Mengelberg en zijn vrouw’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 43 (1995), pp. 59-64, spec. fig. 4. One year later, in September 1915, Pander did a portrait of Mengelberg’s wife. In this case, he applied the same technique involving green plasticine on glass plate. As far as can be ascertained, no other versions were ever made from this model. Mathilde Mengelberg appears in full profile, from the beholder’s point of view facing left. The work is signed and dated along the edge where the arm terminates: P. Pander 1915. The portrait displays some craquelure, a result of natural aging when oil evaporates from the plasticine.

Pander’s first meeting with the Mengelbergs may possibly have occurred as early as 1910, the year of the conductor’s first performance in Rome.⁹⁹E. Bysterus Heemskerk, Over Willem Mengelberg, Amsterdam 1971, p. 49 which quotes from a letter written by the composer Diepenbrock Mahler: Er hatt wirklich ausserordentliche Erfolge (‘He had truly extraordinary successes’) and idem p. 141. Certain is that the two men met in Rome in 1913: after an audience with the Pope and having received the papal blessing of his conductor’s baton, Mengelberg visited the sculptor’s workshop. It was this meeting that resulted in the commissioning of his own portrait. Pander agreed to do the portrait during his next sojourn in the Netherlands; Mengelberg likewise invited him to attend a performance of Mahler in the Concertgebouw.¹⁰¹⁰My thanks to Frits Zwart, director NMI, The Hague, for his information on Mengelberg. The nature of the two men’s exchange is clearly reflected in a number of Pander’s letters to Mengelberg, today preserved at the Mengelberg Archive in the Netherlands Music Institute (NMI), The Hague.¹¹¹¹J.P. Wiersma, Pier Pander een Fries beeldhouwer in Rome (1864-1919), Drachten 1966, p. 162.

The first mention of Mathilde Mengelberg’s portrait occurs in a letter from Pander, dated 16 April 1915 in Rome: ‘In any case, I naturally very much hope to make Mrs. Mengelberg’s portrait in September in Amsterdam, together with another. Regards…’¹²¹²In elk geval hoop ik natuurlijk zeer in September ’t portret van Mevr. Mengelberg te kunnen maken benevens nog een ander te Amsterdam. Groeten van Juffr. de Kanter en tt Pier Pander Rome 16 apr. ’15; The Hague, Kunstmuseum, Stichting Het Willem Mengelberg-Archief: letter of 16 April 1915 from Pander to Mengelberg. In his letter, Pander naturally refers to the events of the war which severely impeded travel throughout Europe. In spite of the ongoing war, Pander managed to spend the summer of 1915 in the Netherlands. In a letter written from his regular summer address in Heerenveen on 4 September of the same year, Pander wrote Mathilde: ‘I still hope it’s okay that, as we agreed last year, that I come to model your portrait around the sixteenth of this month in Amsterdam and to make another 12 casts of that of your husband?¹³¹³Het is toch hoop ik goed, dat ik, als verleden jaar werd afgesproken, ongeveer 16 dezer in Amsterdam kom om uw portret te boetseeren en van dat van Uw man nog 12 afgietsels te maken? Shortly thereafter, Pander scribbled the following message on an undated business card: ‘What time should we begin tomorrow with the portrait? Then I’ll come an hour earlier to prepare the glass plate with plasticine. I’m staying very close to there, namely Van Breestraat 69 [Amsterdam]. Bye.’¹⁴¹⁴hoe laat morgen beginnen met ’t portret? Dan kom ik een uur vroeger om de ruit met plastilina te prepareeren. Ik logeer hier dichtbij namelijk Van Breestraat 69. Dag. How ironic that, almost eighty years after it was made in September 1915, Pander’s plasticine portrait of Mathilde Mengelberg-Wübbe was discarded on the very same street, left as mere rubbish to be taken away, together with numerous other items of Mengelberg memorabilia. He was indeed in very close proximity, as the Mengelbergs resided around the corner at Van Eeghenstraat 105-107, where they lived in two adjoining upper-floor houses. In the end, Pander’s portrait of Mathilde Mengelberg was made at the agreed time and place and precisely as he had specified: on a glass plate with plasticine. Once completed, the plate was subsequently mounted in an olive-green passepartout frame. Its austere wooden frame, identical to that of Mengelberg’s marble portrait from the year before, was undoubtedly made by the same company, Fetter, on the Vijzelstraat in Amsterdam. In their identical frames, the two portraits thus formed visual pendants, visually minimizing the disparate media in which they were made.

On 24 November 1915, a final surviving letter from Pier Pander, addressed to Mathilde Mengelberg, was sent from Rome. In the letter, the sculptor cites a problem with the payment, stating that he had only received 200 guilders instead of the agreed amount of 1,200 guilders (for the second series of 12 casts?). That the letter was written to Mathilde Mengelberg by no means necessarily suggests that this amount concerned her own portrait, completed only a few months before: a notoriously poor correspondent, Mengelberg often left letters unanswered.¹⁵¹⁵Oral communication Frits Zwart, director NMI, The Hague; see also E. Bysterus Heemskerk, Over Willem Mengelberg, Amsterdam 1971, pp. 52-53. By this time all too familiar with this state of affairs, Pander would wisely have appealed to Mengelberg’s wife, as she commonly attended to her husband’s bookkeeping. Whatever the case may be, the outcome is unknown.

Frits Scholten, 2026

E. Meyer et al., De gebeeldhouwde kop: De ontwikkeling van de gebeeldhouwde kop en het portretbeeld in Nederland van middeleeuwen tot heden, exh. cat. Nijmegen (Nijmeegs Museum Commanderie van Sint-Jan) 1994, no. 62; F. Scholten, ‘De beeldhouwer Pier Pander en de portretten van Willem Mengelberg en zijn vrouw’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 43 (1995), pp. 59-64; F. Scholten, Gebeeldhouwde portretten/Portrait Sculptures, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995, no. 53; M. Broersma, Pier Pander (1864-1919): Zoektocht naar zuiverheid, Leeuwarden 2007, pp. 118-21

F. Scholten, 2026, 'Pier Pander, Portrait of Mathilde (‘Tilly’) Mengelberg-Wubbe (1875-1943), Amsterdam, 1915', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20046992