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拍品专文
Johannes (Hans) Rijckaert was born in Amsterdam on 11 June 1609 and died in the same city on 12 November 1679 (see ‘Familie-aantekeningen Rijckaert,’ De Nederlandsche Leeuw, XLV, 1927, columns 153 and 182; for full genealogical information regarding parentage and siblings, see the preceding lot). On 20 June 1634, Johannes married Cornelia Merchijs (1614-1694), with whom he had two children, Susanna Rijckaert (b. 1635) and Andries Rijckaert (1636-1716), who sat to Isaack Luttichuys for a pair of portraits in 1666 (sold Christie’s, New York, 30 January 2014, lot 219). In 1658, he was an elder in the Amsterdam Reformed Church.
Cornelis Johnson van Ceulen was born in London to a Flemish family from Antwerp who had emigrated to escape religious persecution. His grandfather originally came from Cologne, hence the frequent addition of ‘van Ceulen’ to his surname. Following the outbreak of the English Civil War and the resulting decrease in court patronage, in 1643, Johnson and his family departed for Middelburg. He subsequently settled in Amsterdam and worked in The Hague before returning to Middelburg in the summer of 1649 and, ultimately, settling in Utrecht in the early 1650s. Johnson was the first British-born artist to habitually sign his paintings, frequently dating them as well.
This portrait dates to the final year of Johnson’s residence in Amsterdam, and his re-emergence in the records of the English church in Middelburg on 30 June 1649 likely provides a terminus ante quem for its production. Johnson’s reputation as a leading portrait painter was by this point beyond doubt: it was in this year that he featured in Jan Meyssens’s Images de divers homes d’esprit sublime…, a portfolio of around one hundred engraved portraits of the most renowned artists of the period (fig. 1).
Johnson’s success as a portraitist was due in no small part to the consistently high quality of his portraits – hallmarks of which included his precise handling of dress and distinctive approach to depicting sitters’ eyes with large, round irises and deep, curving eyelids – and the limited range of poses he applied to his sitters. Johnson employed a similar pose in which the sitter’s proper right hand is placed across his chest in a sign of avowal in works like his 1644 portrait of the Middelburg burgomaster Apolonius Veth (1603-1653), now in the Tate museum in London. Veth may also have been the conduit by which Rijckaert came into contact with the artist. On 31 December 1639, Veth served as a witness at the baptism of Rijckaert’s son, Jan. Johnson conveyed his sitter’s social position not only through his costly black satin dress but the pair of leather gloves held in his left hand. Such items were indicators of rank and prosperity in the seventeenth century and were often given as gifts at betrothals or weddings, though no such pendant is known for the present work.
This painting has descended from the sitter in the Roëll and de Geer families and is appearing on the market for the first time.
We are grateful to Karen Hearn for her assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.
Cornelis Johnson van Ceulen was born in London to a Flemish family from Antwerp who had emigrated to escape religious persecution. His grandfather originally came from Cologne, hence the frequent addition of ‘van Ceulen’ to his surname. Following the outbreak of the English Civil War and the resulting decrease in court patronage, in 1643, Johnson and his family departed for Middelburg. He subsequently settled in Amsterdam and worked in The Hague before returning to Middelburg in the summer of 1649 and, ultimately, settling in Utrecht in the early 1650s. Johnson was the first British-born artist to habitually sign his paintings, frequently dating them as well.
This portrait dates to the final year of Johnson’s residence in Amsterdam, and his re-emergence in the records of the English church in Middelburg on 30 June 1649 likely provides a terminus ante quem for its production. Johnson’s reputation as a leading portrait painter was by this point beyond doubt: it was in this year that he featured in Jan Meyssens’s Images de divers homes d’esprit sublime…, a portfolio of around one hundred engraved portraits of the most renowned artists of the period (fig. 1).
Johnson’s success as a portraitist was due in no small part to the consistently high quality of his portraits – hallmarks of which included his precise handling of dress and distinctive approach to depicting sitters’ eyes with large, round irises and deep, curving eyelids – and the limited range of poses he applied to his sitters. Johnson employed a similar pose in which the sitter’s proper right hand is placed across his chest in a sign of avowal in works like his 1644 portrait of the Middelburg burgomaster Apolonius Veth (1603-1653), now in the Tate museum in London. Veth may also have been the conduit by which Rijckaert came into contact with the artist. On 31 December 1639, Veth served as a witness at the baptism of Rijckaert’s son, Jan. Johnson conveyed his sitter’s social position not only through his costly black satin dress but the pair of leather gloves held in his left hand. Such items were indicators of rank and prosperity in the seventeenth century and were often given as gifts at betrothals or weddings, though no such pendant is known for the present work.
This painting has descended from the sitter in the Roëll and de Geer families and is appearing on the market for the first time.
We are grateful to Karen Hearn for her assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.