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Lot Essay
This intriguing painting, which previously bore an attribution to Bartholomeus van der Helst, is instead, as Sturla Gudlaugsson was the first to suggest in the mid-twentieth century (according to Judith van Gent, op. cit.), probably by the somewhat younger Leiden-born artist Carel de Moor. Norbert Middelkoop (op. cit.), building off Gudlaugsson’s suggestion, has recently connected it with de Moor’s large group portrait depicting the Headmen of the Wine Merchants Guild in Amsterdam, the only known group portrait by the artist in the city. In 1692, de Moor painted a similar group portrait of the Governors of the Lakenhal in Leiden (Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) and, in 1717, another for the magistrates in The Hague (The Hague, Haags Historisch Museum). From photographs, Pamela Fowler has expressed some reservations about differences in the handling of the lace in the Lakenhal portrait and this picture, but agrees that an attribution to Carel de Moor is 'plausible' (email communication, June 2025).
Carel de Moor was commissioned in or around 1696 to paint the Headmen of the Wine Merchants Guild for their Regents Room in the Koestraat in Amsterdam. There, the group portrait hung alongside five similar works, one each by Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680) and Arnold Boonen (1669-1729), two by Jan Maurits Quinkhard (1688-1772) and a further painting by an unknown hand (see lots 8, 9, 82, 83 and 151 in the 1822 sale). In his 1751 biography on de Moor, Jan van Gool described the artist’s painting as ‘a large piece in the Koestraat, able to be seen in public, depicting the six Headmen of the Wine Merchants Guild, which, above all, serves as an indisputable proof of the man’s exalted mind and artistic ability, both in colour and painting style, it is dated 1696’ (op. cit.). The date referenced by van Gool is not present on our half of the painting (for which see below) and Middelkoop has proposed a slightly earlier dating of circa 1690-5 for it (op. cit., I, p. 399). When the portrait was removed from the Regents Room and sold in 1822, the cataloguer for the sale provided a more fulsome description of its composition: ‘Five regents, seated at a table covered with a red cloth, on which are papers, books, money and stationery, behind them one sees two other persons, between some columns one sees in the distance the city hall of Amsterdam, as well as the IJ, in front of the table one sees a reclining dog. Beautifully treated and nicely arranged.’
The apparent discrepancy in the number of figures recorded by van Gool in 1751 and the cataloguer in 1822 can easily be reconciled by the fact that there were six headmen accompanied by a servant. Jan Wagenaar (op. cit., II, p. 470) relayed how the Headmen were elected annually in October on a rotating basis, with three newly appointed each year. The Headmen met every Monday between five and seven, and the guild servant was given free accommodations in the Guild house.
The group portrait must have been cut into two halves at some point between 1822 and 1829, for it already reappears in a sale held in the latter year in its current format, albeit with an attribution to van der Helst. Presumably the present work would have extended further to the left, as there is evidence on that edge that it has been reduced, and the signature and date mentioned by van Gool were on the other half. The villainous act perpetrated upon the canvas may well have been the ill-conceived handiwork of the auctioneer and dealer Jeronimo de Vries (1776-1853), who acquired the painting at the 1822 sale. Though anathema to modern sensibilities, it says something of the way works of art were appreciated in preceding centuries. Indeed, as Middelkoop has pointed out (op. cit., I, p. 398), of the five group portraits that featured in the 1822 sale that can be securely identified today, only the painting by Bol (Munich, Alte Pinakothek) survives intact.
In her monograph on Ludolf Backhuysen, Gerlinde de Beer (op. cit.) proposed that the background in this painting was likely the work of Amsterdam’s greatest marine painter of the final quarter of the seventeenth century. While only a small portion of the background can be seen in the painting in its current format, the description of it in the 1822 sale suggests the landscape probably played a far more significant role in the now-missing left half of the composition. Backhuysen is indeed known to have contributed marine backgrounds for other portraitists, including in the 1668 portraits by van der Helst depicting the vice-admirals Aert van Nes (1626-1693) and Johan de Liefde (c. 1619-1673), both in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
We are grateful to Pamela Fowler, Dr. Norbert E. Middelkoop, Dr. Sara van Dijk and Dr. Eddy Schavemaker for their assistance in the cataloguing this lot.
Carel de Moor was commissioned in or around 1696 to paint the Headmen of the Wine Merchants Guild for their Regents Room in the Koestraat in Amsterdam. There, the group portrait hung alongside five similar works, one each by Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680) and Arnold Boonen (1669-1729), two by Jan Maurits Quinkhard (1688-1772) and a further painting by an unknown hand (see lots 8, 9, 82, 83 and 151 in the 1822 sale). In his 1751 biography on de Moor, Jan van Gool described the artist’s painting as ‘a large piece in the Koestraat, able to be seen in public, depicting the six Headmen of the Wine Merchants Guild, which, above all, serves as an indisputable proof of the man’s exalted mind and artistic ability, both in colour and painting style, it is dated 1696’ (op. cit.). The date referenced by van Gool is not present on our half of the painting (for which see below) and Middelkoop has proposed a slightly earlier dating of circa 1690-5 for it (op. cit., I, p. 399). When the portrait was removed from the Regents Room and sold in 1822, the cataloguer for the sale provided a more fulsome description of its composition: ‘Five regents, seated at a table covered with a red cloth, on which are papers, books, money and stationery, behind them one sees two other persons, between some columns one sees in the distance the city hall of Amsterdam, as well as the IJ, in front of the table one sees a reclining dog. Beautifully treated and nicely arranged.’
The apparent discrepancy in the number of figures recorded by van Gool in 1751 and the cataloguer in 1822 can easily be reconciled by the fact that there were six headmen accompanied by a servant. Jan Wagenaar (op. cit., II, p. 470) relayed how the Headmen were elected annually in October on a rotating basis, with three newly appointed each year. The Headmen met every Monday between five and seven, and the guild servant was given free accommodations in the Guild house.
The group portrait must have been cut into two halves at some point between 1822 and 1829, for it already reappears in a sale held in the latter year in its current format, albeit with an attribution to van der Helst. Presumably the present work would have extended further to the left, as there is evidence on that edge that it has been reduced, and the signature and date mentioned by van Gool were on the other half. The villainous act perpetrated upon the canvas may well have been the ill-conceived handiwork of the auctioneer and dealer Jeronimo de Vries (1776-1853), who acquired the painting at the 1822 sale. Though anathema to modern sensibilities, it says something of the way works of art were appreciated in preceding centuries. Indeed, as Middelkoop has pointed out (op. cit., I, p. 398), of the five group portraits that featured in the 1822 sale that can be securely identified today, only the painting by Bol (Munich, Alte Pinakothek) survives intact.
In her monograph on Ludolf Backhuysen, Gerlinde de Beer (op. cit.) proposed that the background in this painting was likely the work of Amsterdam’s greatest marine painter of the final quarter of the seventeenth century. While only a small portion of the background can be seen in the painting in its current format, the description of it in the 1822 sale suggests the landscape probably played a far more significant role in the now-missing left half of the composition. Backhuysen is indeed known to have contributed marine backgrounds for other portraitists, including in the 1668 portraits by van der Helst depicting the vice-admirals Aert van Nes (1626-1693) and Johan de Liefde (c. 1619-1673), both in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
We are grateful to Pamela Fowler, Dr. Norbert E. Middelkoop, Dr. Sara van Dijk and Dr. Eddy Schavemaker for their assistance in the cataloguing this lot.