Herman van Vollenhoven

The Painter in his Studio Painting the Portrait of a Couple

1612

Inscriptions

  • signature and date, bottom centre:H. Vollenhove Anº 1612 in Wtre

Technical notes

The plain-weave canvas support has been lined. The tacking edges have been preserved, and cusping is present on all sides. A thin, whitish ground was applied overall, followed by thin paint layers. There are a few large pentimenti: the man’s right hand has been moved, and in an earlier stage pointed towards the skull. The woman’s little finger appears to have been changed, and the position of the skull was also altered.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 9 februari 2005

Condition

Fair. There is some stable cupping. The paint layers are abraded and have become transparent. There are numerous small paint losses throughout, discoloured retouchings and varnish.

Conservation

  • conservator unknown, 1885: canvas lined
  • L. Sozzani, 1992: retouched and revarnished

Provenance

...; purchased by the museum from David van der Kellen II (1804-79), Utrecht, 1873

ObjectNumber: SK-A-889

The artist

Biography

Herman van Vollenhoven (? Utrecht c. 1585 - ? Utrecht in or after 1628)

It is not known precisely when the Utrecht painter and art dealer Herman van Vollenhoven was born. In 1611 he was one of the founding members of the Guild of St Luke, of which he became dean in 1617. The guild accounts show that he had a pupil in 1612, one Bernt Visscher. There are few other known works by him apart from the one in the Rijksmuseum. The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Besançon has a signed but undated Supper at Emmaus .1Illustrated in Pinette/Soulier-François 1992, p. 56. In 1614 Simonde Passe made a print after it; Hollstein XVI, 1974, p. 150, no. 1. There are also three small signed still lifes on panel, two of which are dated 1619.2One of the signed and dated still lifes was with Colnaghi’s in London in 1951. The other was formerly in the collection of Colonel Palmer; White 1982, p. xxi, fig. 17. The third still life which is signed but not dated is in Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado; Valdivieso 1973, pp. 390-91, pl. XXXI.

Van Vollenhoven must have been mainly active as an art dealer. Around 1623, for instance, he sold an early 16th-century Italian painting of a flute player to a buyer from Antwerp. Van Vollenhoven also sold Roelant Savery’s Paradise to the States of Utrecht, which presented it to Amalia van Solms on the occasion of her marriage to Prince Frederik Hendrik.3Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in The Hague 1997, p. 206. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in The Hague 1997, p. 206. He had acquired it in exchange for one of his own works. Van Vollenhoven must have known Savery well, for in 1621 he was one of the painters who declared that they visited Savery almost every day. The last mention of Van Vollenhoven in the Utrecht archives is from 1628. It is not known when he died.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007

References
Kramm III, 1859, p. 1787; Muller 1880, pp. 96, 126, 128; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, p. 524; Bok in Klessmann 1987, pp. 135-38; Domela Nieuwenhuis 2001, I, p. 64 (based on archival research by M.J. Bok)

Entry

Herman van Vollenhoven painted this self-portrait in Utrecht in 1612. He is looking out at the viewer while gesturing towards a couple with his right hand. In front of him is his easel with their as yet unfinished double portrait. The skull and hour-glass on the table allude to life’s brevity. Vanitas symbols of this kind are found in many 16th- and 17th-century self-portraits.4Raupp 1984, pp. 464-69, figs. 157-64. It was a way for an artist to show that painting could enable his name to live on after his death. The couple in this picture, too, could only cheat death by having themselves immortalized in paint.5Raupp 1984, p. 40.

Van Vollenhoven’s painting is very comparable to one of 1594 by Jacob Willemsz Delff, Self-Portrait of the Painter and his Family (SK-A-1460), and the portraits of himself and his wife that Joachim Wtewael painted in 1601.6Illustrated in coll. cat. Utrecht 1999, I, pp. 119-22, nos. 723, 724. The theory that the couple in the present painting were related to the artist, and might even be his parents, is attractive but impossible to verify.7Raupp 1984, p. 338.

One of the most striking similarities between this and one of Van Vollenhoven’s other few known works, The Supper at Emmaus, is the way in which the illusion of depth is reinforced by the curtains hanging on a rail in front of the main scene. It is possible that they were intended to be an allusion to a legend about the famous Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius as recounted by Pliny. Parrhasius had painted some curtains that were so lifelike that his colleague wanted to pull them back to get a better view of the painting of which they were in fact part.8Pliny, Natural History, bk. 35, ch. 65; Van Mander 1604, fol. 67. Such a masterstroke of illusionism would also have been a great challenge for a 17th-century artist.

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. 318.

Literature

Raupp 1984, pp. 40, 338; Middelkoop in Nagasaki 1992, pp. 70-74, no. 1

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 184, no. 1581; 1976, p. 584, no. A 889; 2007, no. 318

Citation

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Herman van Vollenhoven, The Painter in his Studio Painting the Portrait of a Couple, 1612', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6472

(accessed 16 May 2025 14:36:28).

Footnotes

  • 1Illustrated in Pinette/Soulier-François 1992, p. 56. In 1614 Simonde Passe made a print after it; Hollstein XVI, 1974, p. 150, no. 1.
  • 2One of the signed and dated still lifes was with Colnaghi’s in London in 1951. The other was formerly in the collection of Colonel Palmer; White 1982, p. xxi, fig. 17. The third still life which is signed but not dated is in Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado; Valdivieso 1973, pp. 390-91, pl. XXXI.
  • 3Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in The Hague 1997, p. 206. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in The Hague 1997, p. 206.
  • 4Raupp 1984, pp. 464-69, figs. 157-64.
  • 5Raupp 1984, p. 40.
  • 6Illustrated in coll. cat. Utrecht 1999, I, pp. 119-22, nos. 723, 724.
  • 7Raupp 1984, p. 338.
  • 8Pliny, Natural History, bk. 35, ch. 65; Van Mander 1604, fol. 67.