Full-length portraits of less than royal sitters were exceptional in the Netherlands until Rubens and Van Dyck, and in Amsterdam Thomas de Keyser and Rembrandt, made them fashionable. This unassuming portrait of a woman in a quaintly underscaled landscape achieves a distinctive charm and intimacy.
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Title:A Young Woman in a Landscape
Artist:Dutch Painter (dated 1636)
Medium:Oil on wood
Dimensions:26 x 19 7/8 in. (66 x 50.5 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam, 1931
Object Number:32.100.10
Numerous artists have been proposed in connection with this attractive portrait of a woman in quietly elegant attire, and it has been noted convincingly that the landscape must have been painted by another hand. Such a collaboration was fairly common during the 1630s and 1640s, especially in Haarlem and nearby.
The leading authority on Dutch portraiture, Rudolf Ekkart, studied the picture in 1988, and subsequently, at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, reviewed the oeuvres of artists who worked in a comparable manner. He is unable to suggest an author, and of course it is quite possible that the portrait was painted by an artist who is unrecorded or not identified with any known work. The general similarity to portraits by Herman Doncker (active 1633–50) is intriguing, but his figures are usually less well modeled than this one, and his costumes less finely described. For now, the painter of this portrait must remain anonymous, although he or she probably worked in the area of Amsterdam and Haarlem, to judge from the styles of both the figure and the landscape.
When the painting was in the celebrated collection of Charles Crews and later in that of Michael Friedsam, it was considered to be by Thomas de Keyser, the first artist many students of Dutch art would mention in regard to small, full-length portraits painted in Holland during the first half of the seventeenth century. In 1935, curator Harry Wehle changed the ascription from Attributed to Thomas de Keyser to Isaak Luttichuys (1616–1673), evidently in response to Schmidt-Degener's verbal opinion of the same year. Wilhelm Martin (1938) agreed with the attribution to Luttichuys, but Otto Benesch (1940) rejected the idea and cited a similar portrait by Govert Flinck. The case for Luttichuys was dealt a stronger blow when William Valentiner (1946), who had published a monographic article on the artist, dismissed the attribution, maintaining that the work was too early to have been made by him. A year later, Julius Weitzner and "an English dealer" ascribed the picture to "one Donck" (verbal opinions recorded in departmental archives). The suggestion probably was inspired by a painting now in the National Gallery, London, A Family Group (Jan van Hensbeeck and His Wife, Maria Koeck, with an Infant?), signed "GDonck." That panel depicts a Dutch family of the 1630s, full-length on a similar scale, and set in a landscape (which differs considerably in style from that in the New York picture). Although Donck remains nearly unknown to the present day, The Met's attribution was changed to Gerard Donck in 1949. Curator John Walsh reassigned the portrait to Luttichuys in 1973, but Ekkart's rejection of that artist in 1988 was sufficiently compelling to change the attribution in the same year.
[2016; adapted from Liedtke 2007]
Inscription: Dated and inscribed (lower right): Ao 1636 / AETA. 32
Charles T. D. Crews, London and Billingbear Park, Wokingham, Berkshire (until 1915; his estate sale, Christie's, London, July 1–2, 1915, no. 41, as by Thomas de Keyser, to Buttery); [Ehrich Galleries, New York, until 1917; sold to Kleinberger]; [Kleinberger, New York, 1917; sold for $8,000 to Friedsam]; Michael Friedsam, New York (1917–d. 1931)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Michael Friedsam Collection," November 15, 1932–April 9, 1933, no catalogue.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 18, 2007–January 6, 2008, no catalogue.
Wilhelm R. Valentiner in The Michael Friedsam Collection. [completed 1928], p. 6, attributes it to Thomas de Keyser and notes that the landscape shows the influence of Van Goyen.
Wolfgang Stechow. Salomon van Ruysdael: Eine Einführung in seine Kunst. Berlin, 1938, p. 21 n. 7, comments on the Ruysdael-like landscape.
Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Letter. April 12, 1946, rejects the attribution to Luttichuys.
Millia Davenport. The Book of Costume. New York, 1948, vol. 2, p. 613, no. 1620, ill. (cropped).
Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 32.
Franklin W. Robinson. Dutch Life in the Golden Century. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Fla. St. Petersburg, Fla., 1975, p. 30, under no. 15, mentions it in a discussion of a portrait of a woman attributed to Pieter van den Bos (Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg).
Wolfgang Stechow. Salomon van Ruysdael: Eine Einführung in seine Kunst. 2nd, rev., enl. ed. Berlin, 1975, p. 21 n. 7.
Peter C. Sutton. A Guide to Dutch Art in America. Grand Rapids, Mich., 1986, p. 184, as by Luttichuys.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 298, ill., as "A Young Woman in a Landscape".
Walter Liedtke. Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2007, vol. 2, pp. 995–97, no. 227, colorpl. 227.
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