De Arnhemse familie Craeyvanger - een bijzondere groep portretten door Paulus Lesire, Gerard ter Borch en Castar Netscher

• Autores: Ariane van Suchtelen
• Localización: Oud Holland: quarterly for Dutch art history, ISSN 0030-672X, Vol. 127, Nº. 1, 2014, págs. 7-24
• Idioma: neerlandés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The portraits of the Arnhem couple Willem Craeyvanger (1615/1616-after 1666) and Christine van der Wart (1620-1666) and their eight children were auctioned in Amsterdam in 2009. Virtually unknown until then, they were painted by Paulus Lesire (the father), Gerard ter Borch (the oldest four children) and Caspar Netscher (the mother and the youngest four children).

    The cloth merchant Willem Craeyvanger was 35 when he sat to the Hague painter Paulus Lesire in 1651. His wife was painted around five years later, but not by Lesire, for the almost invisible signature of Caspar Netscher came to light when her picture was restored after the sale, along with the inscription "aetatis 35". This was surprising, because the scale and type of half-length portrait are atypical for Netscher. The discovery that Christine van der Wart was born in 1620 in Nijmegen means that her likeness should be dated 1655 or 1656, making it one of Netscher's earliest known paintings.

    A different form and format were chosen when the eight children were portrayed in 1658 - not half-length and almost lifesize but calf-length in painted ovals, and on a smaller scale. They are matched together in pairs by age in pendant portraits. Ter Borch's refined, assured manner can be recognised in the unsigned portratis of the four oldest children. Netscher's almost invisible signature has been detected on the portraits of the three youngest ones, and the likeness of the fifth child can also be attributed to him.

    Netscher deliberately executed his pictures to match his teacher's style, although they are not quite as subtle. Both artists must have worked on the eight portraits side by side in Ter Borch's studio in Deventer, where they uses the same materials. That is clear not only from the very closely related style and technique but also from the fact that the children's portraits are on suports cut from a single large piece of primed canvas. The name of each child is written in an eighteenth or nineteenth-century hand on the back of its unlined canvas, together with the date 1658, which in the year that Netscher inscribed on the portraits of the youngest son, Gerrit.

    Archival research unearthed a wealth of information about the Craeyvanger family. Willem and Christine Craeyvanger, who were Protestants, married in Arnhem in 1639. They were members of what we would now call the upper middle class. Willem occupied many local government posts, and was appointed land agent for the city in 1663. In 1666 he became bankrupt and fled Arnhem, abandoning his destitute wife and children, who were then between 11 and 25 years old. The family's belongings were divided up by the creditors, with the exception of the family portraits, which were not worth any money outside of the family. Christine died a few months after the bankruptcy. The portraits passed down through the family for 350 years in a direct line from Willem, the second son.