RKD STUDIES

Oil on canvas, 76 x 68 cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv.no. 1317

The French philosopher René Descartes's (1596-1650) connection with Haarlem was probably due to the priest and philosopher Augustijn Bloemert (1585-1659), who had expressed a desire for a portrait of Descartes, according to a 1691 source.¹

Hals's portrait of Descartes is recorded most impressively in the engraving by Jonas Suyderhoef (1614-1686) which names Hals as the painter of the original and gives the date as 1650 [1]. This engraving will have been the primary objective of Hals's commission. The situation is likely to have been similar to that of the engraved portraits of other priests and scholars. The goal was not to receive a portrait painted by Hals, as has been traditionally assumed, but rather to have an accurate likeness that was suitable for reproduction.² All the painted versions of this portrait that are listed below, appear flatter and more rigid, falling short of the ambition of Hals's original portraits. The present version in the Louvre is closest to Suyderhoef's print. The sitter's face is coherently proportioned and renders incidental details such as the wart on the illuminated cheek . Based on this picture, with its collected expression and wearily raised eyebrows, it is understandable that Hals's portrait formula was preferred over any other known portraits of this sitter; it was copied multiple times and even reproduced in a commemorative medal.³ Slive's publications of 1970 and 2014 show the engravings by Frans van Schooten (1615-1660) of 1644 and by Cornelis van Dalen (1602-1665) of c. 1650-1655, as well as the drawing by Jan Lievens (1607-1674) and the painting by Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-1659).⁴ When observed jointly, these very different representations give both an idea of Descartes's facial features, and an insight into Hals's particular achievement, which concentrates on the expression in the eyes and the facial movement. Adding to the reception history, Erasmus Bartholinus (1625-1698) was said to consider only Van Schooten's portrait as an accurate representation of the sitter’s features. However, he was a pupil Van Schooten – a mathematician and committed Cartesian, who had drawn and engraved the image of his revered idol as a side business. In his article of 1957-1958, Johan Nordström also mentioned Bartholinus’ remark about two further copper engravings depicting the portrait of Descartes, which however failed to capture his facial expression. He referred to an engraving by Cornelis van Dalen and Suyderhoef’s engraving after Frans Hals.⁵

More recently, Richard Watson discussed the outer appearance of Descartes in his biography of the philosopher and maintained that the portrait in the Louvre was neither by Hals nor did it depict Descartes. ‘The one that was exhibited so many years in the Louvre in Paris has been taken down because of his double inauthenticity’. […] There are only two portraits we know certainly to be of Descartes – a drawing by Frans van Schooten and a painting by Jan Baptist Weenix. Schooten drew his portrait to include with the 1644 Latin translation of Descartes’s Geometry. It shows a thinner man than does the fake Hals portrait. Descartes’s friends did not like it, but all Descartes said about it was that the beard and clothes were not right. […] The so-called Frans Hals portrait could conceivably be someone’s heroic conception of how an older Descartes would have looked based on the Schooten drawing. […] The Weenix portrait shows that Descartes looked nothing at all like the man of approximately the same age in the so-called Frans Hals portrait. The “Hals Descartes” has firm facial features and a heroic mien. The man in the fake Hals is big and tall, but Weenix and Lievens show that Descartes was a small chubby man with short arms and a double chin. […] Constantijn Huygens was a friend and patron of Lievens and probably commissioned Descartes’s portrait’.⁶ In contrast to Watson’s assessment, it is precisely the comparison with the portraits by Van Schooten, Lievens, and Weenix which demonstrates that the sitter was identical to the one in Hals’s portrait. However, in order to do so, it is necessary to reconstruct Hals’s lost modello on the basis of Suyderhoef’s engraving, which contains details that are lost in the painted portraits in the Louvre and in Copenhagen (A4.1.15a). The movement of the brows, the nasal fold and the corner of the mouth are noticeably clearer here, and the face appears more fine-featured than in the painted copies [2][3][4].

Slive quite rightly refuted Nordström's theory that Hals had created Descartes's portrait not from life but rather after Van Schooten's engraving.⁷ The same objection must be made with regard to Watson’s statement. Such a procedure from differently presented and illuminated facial features cannot be substantiated. Even the most dedicated physiognomist would not be able to produce such a variation from memory and based on an entirely differently presented portrait.

Hals's portrait of Descartes was probably painted shortly before the latter's departure for Stockholm, which concluded the philosopher's sojourn in the Netherlands from 1628 to September 1649. Steven Nadler recently summarized the results from the available sources: ‘The painting was made sometime that summer, perhaps as late as September, when Descartes finally embarked for Sweden. It must have been done before Descartes went to Amsterdam to settle some affairs and board the ship to Stockholm […] So if the painting is from life and Descartes did pose for Hals, in all likelihood it was done in Haarlem when Descartes’s final departure from Egmont was imminent’.⁸ What was most likely created at that point, was the portrait painted by Hals, which is no longer preserved, but which formed the basis for Suyderhoef’s engraving and all painted copies.

In accordance with the sitter’s reputation, his portrait was copied many times in paintings, engravings and medals, typically based on Suyderhoef’s engraving (C46). Slive lists the following further engravers: Gérard Edelinck (1640-1707), Carel Allard (1648-1709), Jacques Lubin (c. 1659-after 1703), Jacob Gole (c. 1665-1724), Etienne Ficquet (1719-1794), Jean-Baptiste de Grateloup (1735-1817), Joachim Oortman (1777-1818), Pierre-François Bertonnier (1791-after 1854).⁹ The distinction of Hals’s portrait as conveyed by Suyderhoef is especially apparent in the portrait of Descartes by the Swedish court painter David Beck (1621-1656), probably dating from 1650 or 1651, where the head is based on the countered engraving.¹⁰

A4.1.15
© 2016 RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/ Tony Querrec

1
Jonas Suyderhoef
Portrait of René Descartes (1596-1650), after February 1650
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-OB-60.718
cat.no. C46

2
Detail of cat.no. C46

3
Detail of cat.no. A4.1.15
©2016 RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/ Tony Querrec

4
Detail of cat.no. A4.1.15a
workshop of Frans Hals (I) or after Frans Hals (I)
Portrait of Descartes, c. 1649
Copenhagen, SMK – National Gallery of Denmark

Oil on panel, 19 x 14 cm
Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, on loan from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv.no. 998

This is a smaller and simplified copy, with coarser and more mechanical brushwork than can be found in other, comparable, and larger formats executed by Hals himself. It cannot be considered as the original example for either the larger size version in Paris (A4.1.15), nor for Jonas Suyderhoef's engraving (C46), since the finer details included in the latter were certainly not randomly invented afterwards. These details form an essential part of the portrait and determine its expression. Earlier assessments of the Copenhagen picture cannot be upheld, due to the high-resolution images available today, which can be enlarged to display and compare even the craquelure.

A4.1.15a

Oil on panel, 28.5 x 23.5 cm
Private collection

This portrait was most likely executed in parallel to Jonas Suyderhoef's (1614-1686) engraving of the same size, which was probably based on the same lost model by Hals [5]. The eight lines of verse that commemorate the deceased sitter under his engraved portrait, are repeated on the back of the present small panel.¹¹ As in most other cases, the occasion for the engraving and the painting was to posthumously commemorate the esteemed sitter through distributing his representation among his friends and followers.

Adrianus Tegularius (c. 1605-1654) had been active as a priest in Haarlem for thirty years. Hals's model for the portrait is likely to have been created shortly before the sitter's death in September 1654 – the commission probably having come from his congregation. Slive implicitly raises the question whether the painting is a posthumous representation, referencing to two of such cases by Rembrandt.¹² While highly talented painters can certainly be credited with an excellent memory and power of improvisation indeed, a posthumous depiction seems inconceivable for the present case – impossible even, for such a relatively large format and strikingly individual appearance of the sitter. Even though Rembrandt posthumously created the well-known portrait of Johannes Cornelis Sylvius (1565-1638) eight years after the latter’s death, he had already portrayed Sylvius in 1633 and could have thus referred to preparatory drawings from that period.¹³ The portrait engraving Rembrandt made of Jan Antonides van der Linden (1609-1664) a year after his death, is comparatively small, the face measuring just 2.8 cm from the hairline to the chin.¹⁴ In Hals’s painted Portrait of Adrianus Tegularius, the same area measures 7 cm and renders concrete facial features with distinct details.

The engraving by Suyderhoef conveys such a pronounced character that its existence would be unthinkable without an equally explicit modello by Hals. Taking into account the high quality of the engraving, and the much coarser repetition of the subject in the painting, the order of precedence is clear. The print presents a magnificent portrait with an energetic expression on the powerful face, with matching details in the hands and the folds of the coat. In spite of the engraving’s monochromatic character, it is obvious that every brushstroke of the example was placed with determination. Accordingly, there must have been a fully finished painted modello.

A4.1.16

5
Jonas Suyderhoef
Portrait of Adriaen Tegularius, after c. 1654
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-OB-60.770
cat.no. C48

Oil on paper, transferred to canvas, 32 x 26 cm
Berlin, private collection Joseph Block

This small painting is the only preserved portrait from Hals's workshop that is painted in oil on paper. Mounted onto canvas, it illustrates a body of work otherwise lost, due to the fragility of the material and the wear and tear brought by repeated use. Its present whereabouts are unknown today, and it was last reported in a private collection in Berlin in 1932.¹⁵

The size corresponds to that of the related engraving by Jonas Suyderhoef's (1614-1686) [6]. Compared to the print, the painted modello seems to have been cut along the upper edge, and on the left, cutting of the back of the chair. In the print, four lines of Latin verse are formulated below the portrait to honor the sitter, who can be identified as Theodorus Wickenburg († 1655), a priest active in Haarlem. The phrase F Hals Pinsit in the engraving’s lower left corner explicitly refers to Hals as the originator of the composition. The print renders an execution in wide, somewhat coarse brushstrokes, and a melancholic disposition in the sitter, which diverges from typical autograph works by Hals.

The present painted portrait fits into a group of late portraits from the Hals workshop, which I have tentatively attributed to Hals's son, Frans Hals (II) (1618-1669). Characteristic elements are the very distinctive diagonal brushstrokes, the blurry execution of the hand, which is too small and too flat, and the overall two-dimensional representation. The composition shows similarities to the 1656 Portrait of Tyman Oosdorp (A1.126), while the style of painting appears to be closer to the handling in the Portrait of Vincent Laurens. van der Vinne (A4.3.47), the Portrait of a seated man in Paris (A4.3.52), and the Portrait of an unknown man in Cambridge (A4.3.55).

A4.1.17

6
Jonas Suyderhoef
Portrait of Theodorus Wickenburg (? - 1655), c. 1655
Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, inv./cat.nr. A 23997
cat.no. C49

Oil on oval canvas, transferred to panel and made into a rectangle, 29.5 x 23.8 cm
London, art dealer D.H. Cevat

Slive describes this painting as ‘a weaker version’ of the Portrait of Theodorus Wickenburg.¹⁶

Oil on panel, 27.5 x 23 cm
Worcester, Worcester Art Museum, inv. no. 1994.273

The identification of the present sitter is confirmed by a hand-written note on the first edition of the engraving by Jonas Suyderhoef (1614-1686) [7]. This particular print, which is kept in the Albertina in Vienna, bears the inscription ‘François Post, Peinctre de prince Mauriti Gouverneur des Indes Occidentales’ in the lower margin. Frans Post (1612-1680) was a Haarlem painter who had taken part in Prince Johan Maurits von Nassau-Siegen's (1604-1679) West Indian expedition from 1636 to 1644. Subsequently, he become famous for his depictions of Brazilian landscapes, which were based on the drawings he had made during the voyage.

In the present case, the painting and the copper engraving are equal in size. The overall composition is consistent, as are the modelling of the facial features, and the folds running along the sleeve. A difference is notable in the contrasts of light and dark. As in many other pictures from this period, the delicate highlights in the modelling have sunk, due to the saponification of the lead white that was mixed in with the other pigments. This has affected the appearance of the folds in the sleeve and the row of buttons, as well as the highlights in the eyes that are still visible in the engraving. Superficial nuances in the modelling of the face, the collar, and the hair have disappeared in part or entirely through cleaning or the fading of the thin paint layers. Apart from these unavoidable changes, the excellent reproduction technique of the engravers working for Hals, who did not make arbitrary changes, is verifiable here. The original painted design has some weaknesses, such as the upper body that is probably too small, the short arm, and the tiny hand. A comparison with the similarly positioned arm in the slightly later Portrait of a man with a slouch hat in Kassel (A1.130) [8] [9] rules out an execution by Frans Hals for the present painting. Here, the overall style differs from the master’s approach; it is clumsier and does not reflect the tension and rhythmical movement of the facial features that are so evident in the late autograph portraits. Whenever Hals himself was involved in this instance, whether in the design or in a first sketching phase, cannot be decided only by studying the painting in its current condition. Stylistically, the portrait can be dated to c. 1655-1658.

A4.1.18
© Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, Stoddard Acquisition Fund

7
Jonas Suyderhoef
Portrait of Frans Post (1612-1680), after c. 1655
Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, inv./cat.nr. H/I/61/60
cat.no. C50

8
Detail of cat.no. A1.130
Frans Hals (I)
Portrait of a man with a slouch hat, c. 1663-1664
Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
Photo: Ute Brunzel

9
Detail of cat.no. A4.1.18