Hanneman was a highly successful portraitist in The Hague, where his Dutch version of Van Dyck's style ideally suited the court city's cosmopolitan patrons. This portrait of an elegant young woman dates from about 1653. The detailed passages of lace were probably painted by an assistant.
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Title:Portrait of a Woman
Artist:Adriaen Hanneman (Dutch, The Hague 1603/4–1671 The Hague)
Date:ca. 1653
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:31 1/2 x 25 in. (80 x 63.5 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1889
Object Number:89.15.27
Hanneman was a highly successful portraitist in The Hague, where his Dutch version of Flemish master Anthony van Dyck's manner was ideally suited to the court city's cosmopolitan patrons. This unsigned portrait is certainly by Hanneman and has been dated convincingly to about 1653 (Kuile 1976). The work is one of several portraits of upper-middle-class women in which the painter slightly varied a standard compositional scheme. His Portrait of a Woman, dated 1653, in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, is very similar in design and even in the sitter's appearance, costume, and jewelry, although she is clearly not the same person.
Kuile conjectured that the Museum's picture might have had a male pendant, and he proposed the Portrait of a Man, signed and dated 1655, in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. That canvas is about the same size and has a similar tan background. The fact that the man appears closer and higher in the composition than the woman in The Met's painting would seem to speak against a pendant relationship were it not for the fact that the same disparity occurs in several approximately contemporary pair portraits by Hanneman. However, the relevant examples feature a complementary play of male and female hands, whereas no hands are included in the Dulwich picture. Furthermore, a number of male portraits by Hanneman must now be unknown or unidentified.
The rather flat and mechanical description of the lace brings to mind passages in portraits from the workshop of Michiel van Miereveld and may indicate the use of an assistant for costume details.
[2011; adapted from Liedtke 2007]
Henry G. Marquand, New York (until 1889)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Exhibition of 1888–89," 1888–89, no. 22 (as "Portrait," by Janssen).
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.
Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 47.
O[nno]. ter Kuile. Adriaen Hanneman, 1604–1671: een haags portretschilder. Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands, 1976, pp. 15–16, 79, under no. 20, pp. 81, 86, under no. 32, no. 24, pl. 10, dates it about 1653, and suggests that the "Portrait of a Man" (no. 32) of 1655 in the Dulwich Picture Gallery might be its pendant.
Peter C. Sutton. A Guide to Dutch Art in America. Grand Rapids, Mich., 1986, p. 183.
Walter Liedtke. "Dutch Paintings in America: The Collectors and Their Ideals." Great Dutch Paintings from America. Exh. cat., Mauritshuis, The Hague. Zwolle, The Netherlands, 1990, p. 36.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 308, ill., as "Portrait of a Woman".
Esmée Quodbach. "The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 65 (Summer 2007), pp. 12, 14, fig. 10 (print of Marquand gallery).
Walter Liedtke. Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2007, vol. 1, pp. 306–7, no. 71, colorpl. 71, calls a date of about 1653 convincing, and notes that "a dating to 1654 or 1655 is also possible, to judge from the costume and coiffure, but a date earlier than 1653 is unlikely".
Marina Senenko. Collection of Dutch Paintings, XVII–XIX Centuries. Moscow, 2009, pp. 172–73.
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