Rembrandt and Hals Visit the Arundel Collection

Frans Hals,  Portrait of a Woman (Judith Leyster?), ca. 1652, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

On the basis of a tight timeline of opportunity and visual comparisons between paintings, it is suggested that certainly Rembrandt and likely Frans Hals visited the Arundel collection around the year 1652, and were particularly influenced by portraits of Lord and Lady Guildford, among the many works by Hans Holbein in the collection. Connections are drawn to Rembrandt’s 1652 Large Self-Portrait in Vienna and to Hals’s likely pendant portraits of a woman in the Frick Collection and a man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.7

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staffs at the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the St. Louis Art Museum for their assistance with this material, as well as the anonymous reviewer for the JHNA who provided insightful feedback.

Hans Holbein,  Portrait of Lord Guildford, 1527,  Windsor Castle, Royal Collection
Fig. 1 Hans Holbein, Portrait of Lord Guildford, 1527, oil on panel, 82.7 x 66.4 cm.  Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, inv. RCIN 400046 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hans Holbein,  Portrait of Lady Guildford, 1527, St. Louis Art Museum
Fig. 2 Hans Holbein, Portrait of Lady Guildford, 1527, oil on panel, 87 x 70.6 cm. St. Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase, inv. 1:1943 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Portrait of a Woman (Judith Leyster?), ca. 1652, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 3 Frans Hals, Portrait of a Woman (Judith Leyster?), ca. 1652, oil on canvas, 100 x 81.9 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1890, inv. 91.26.10 (artwork in the public domain). [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Portrait of a Painter (Jan Miense Molenaer?), ca. 1652, New York, The Frick Collection
Fig. 4 Frans Hals, Portrait of a Painter (Jan Miense Molenaer?), ca. 1652, oil on canvas, 100.3 x 82.9 cm. New York, The Frick Collection, Henry Clay Frick Bequest, inv. 1906.1.71 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Rembrandt,  Large Self-Portrait, 1652, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie
Fig. 5 Rembrandt, Large Self-Portrait, 1652, oil on canvas, 112 x 8.15 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, inv. 411 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Rembrandt (?),  Full-Length Self-Portrait, 1652, Amsterdam, Museum het Rembrandthuis
Fig. 6 Rembrandt (?), Full-Length Self-Portrait, 1652, pen and brown ink, 20.3 x 13.4 cm. Amsterdam, Museum het Rembrandthuis (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hans Holbein,  Portrait of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Mil, 1538, London, National Gallery
Fig. 7 Hans Holbein, Portrait of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, 1538, oil on panel, 179.1 x 82.6 cm. London, National Gallery, inv. NG2475 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Rembrandt,  Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 8 Rembrandt, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653, oil on canvas 143.5 x 136.5 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, iinv. 61.198 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Wenzel Hollar, after Hans Holbein,  Portrait of a Man with a Beard, Beret, and Chain, 1647, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Fig. 9 Wenzel Hollar, after Hans Holbein, Portrait of a Man with a Beard, Beret, and Chain, 1647, etching. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
  1. 1. Arnold Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlandtsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen (Amsterdam: Weduwe Houbraken, 1718–21), 2:18.

  2. 2. Literature on the Arundel collection is vast, but especially good are the studies of David Howarth, including “The Arundel Collection: Collecting and Patronage in England in the Reigns of Philip III and Philip IV,” in The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations Between Spain and Great Britain, 1604–1655, exh. cat., ed. Jonathan Brown and Jonathan Elliot (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 69–86.

  3. 3. A convenient reference with relevant literature on Lady Arundel is Michelle DiMeo, “Howard, Aletheia, Countess of Arundel, of Surrey, and of Norfolk, and suo jure Baroness Furnivall, Baroness Talbot, and Baroness Strange of Blackmere (d. 1654),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., January 2008, ed. Lawrence Goldman. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/94252 (accessed December 14, 2015).

  4. 4. Juliet Claxton, “The Countess of Arundel’s Dutch Pranketing Room,” Journal of the History of Collections 22, no. 2 (November 2010): 187–96; first published online August 17, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhp035

  5. 5. On Junius, see, most recently, Thijs Weststeijn, Art and Antiquity in the Netherlands and Britain: The Vernacular Arcadia of Franciscus Junius (1591–1677) (Leiden: Brill, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004283992

  6. 6. Joachim von Sandrart, Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau- Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste, vol. 2 (Nuremberg, 1675). On Arundel hosting artists in England, see Craig Ashley Hanson, The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 24ff; and Christiane Hille, Visions of the Courtly Body: The Patronage of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, and the Triumph of Painting at the Stuart Court  (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 20–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/9781920338367http://dx.doi.org/10.1524/9783050062556

  7. 7. The 1655 inventory was published in Lionel Cust and Mary L. Cox, “Notes on the Collections Formed by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, K.G.,” Burlington Magazine 19, no. 101 (August 1911): 278–86. The beginning of the inventory was mistakenly omitted from the original publication and published subsequently. See Mary L. Cox, “Inventory of the Arundel Collection,” Burlington Magazine 19, no. 102 (September 1911): 323–25.

  8. 8. Walter Liedtke. Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art  (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 1:ix, 295–98, no. 68, color pl. 68, fig. 80.

  9. 9. Paul Crenshaw, “Frans Hals’s Portrait of an Older Judith Leyster,” College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, February 10–13, 2010. The papers from this session on “Old Women, Witches and Old Wives” and additional ones will be published together, edited by Frima Fox Hofrichter.

  10. 10. The identification of Molenaer is easier, as the likeness to his many visages in his genre paintings is keen. The likeness of the Met’s portrait to Leyster’s Self-Portrait in Washington, D.C. (National Gallery of Art) is more problematic, but one must remember that the National Gallery’s painting was created twenty years earlier, before Leyster had experienced five pregnancies.

  11. 11. Joris Dik, “Scientific Analysis of Historical Paint and the Implications for Art History and Art Conservation: The Case Studies of Naples Yellow and Discoloured Smalt,” PhD thesis (Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences [HIMS], University of Amsterdam, 2003), esp. chap. 2, confirmed earlier studies concluding that lead antimonate yellow was exceedingly rare in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, but, curiously, he did find it present in pottery samples from Holland at this time (p. 31).

  12. 12. Van de Wetering, Ernst, et al. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings IV (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 413-15.

  13. 13. See for example Elizabeth Cropper, The Domenichino Affair: Novelty, Innovation and Theft in Seventeenth Century Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), esp. chap. 3, “Imitation, Influence, Invention: The Carracci and Tasso”; Maria Loh, Titian Remade: Repetition and the Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2007); and Eric Jan Sluijter, Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam (1630–1650) (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/oculi.14

Claxton, Juliet.  “The Countess of Arundel’s Dutch Pranketing Room.” Journal of the History of Collections22, no. 2 (November 2010): 187–96. First published online August 17, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhp035

Cust Lionel,  and Mary L. Cox. “Notes on the Collections Formed by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, K.G.” Burlington Magazine19, no. 101 (August 1911): 278–86.

Cox, Mary L.  “Inventory of the Arundel Collection.” Burlington Magazine 19, no. 102 (September 1911):. 323–25.

Crenshaw, Paul. “Frans Hals’s Portrait of an Older Judith Leyster.” Paper presented at the College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, February 10–13, 2010.

Cropper, Elizabeth. The Domenichino Affair: Novelty, Innovation and Theft in Seventeenth Century Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Dik, Joris.  “Scientific Analysis of Historical Paint and the Implications for Art History and Art Conservation: The Case Studies of Naples Yellow and Discoloured Smalt.” PhD thesis, Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS), University of Amsterdam, 2003.

DiMeo, Michelle. “Howard, Aletheia, Countess of Arundel, of Surrey, and of Norfolk, and suo jure Baroness Furnivall, Baroness Talbot, and Baroness Strange of Blackmere (d. 1654).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, January 2008. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/94252

Hanson, Craig Ashley. The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/9781920338367

Hille, Christiane. Visions of the Courtly Body: The Patronage of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, and the Triumph of Painting at the Stuart Court . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1524/9783050062556

Houbraken, Arnold. De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlandtsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen. Amsterdam: Weduwe Houbraken, 1718–21.

Howarth, David. “The Arundel Collection: Collecting and Patronage in England in the Reigns of Philip III and Philip IV.” In The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations Between Spain and Great Britain, 1604–1655, exh. cat., edited by Jonathan Brown and Jonathan Elliot, 69–86. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Liedtke, Walter. Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art . 2 vols. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Loh, Maria. Titian Remade: Repetition and The Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2007.

Sandrart, Joachim von. Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau- Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste . . ., vol. 2. Nuremberg, 1675.

Sluijter, Eric Jan. Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam (1630–1650).  Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins , 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/oculi.14

Weststeijn, Thijs. Art and Antiquity in the Netherlands and Britain: The Vernacular Arcadia of Franciscus Junius (1591–1677) . Leiden: Brill, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004283992

List of Illustrations

Hans Holbein,  Portrait of Lord Guildford, 1527,  Windsor Castle, Royal Collection
Fig. 1 Hans Holbein, Portrait of Lord Guildford, 1527, oil on panel, 82.7 x 66.4 cm.  Windsor Castle, Royal Collection, inv. RCIN 400046 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hans Holbein,  Portrait of Lady Guildford, 1527, St. Louis Art Museum
Fig. 2 Hans Holbein, Portrait of Lady Guildford, 1527, oil on panel, 87 x 70.6 cm. St. Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase, inv. 1:1943 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Portrait of a Woman (Judith Leyster?), ca. 1652, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 3 Frans Hals, Portrait of a Woman (Judith Leyster?), ca. 1652, oil on canvas, 100 x 81.9 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1890, inv. 91.26.10 (artwork in the public domain). [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Portrait of a Painter (Jan Miense Molenaer?), ca. 1652, New York, The Frick Collection
Fig. 4 Frans Hals, Portrait of a Painter (Jan Miense Molenaer?), ca. 1652, oil on canvas, 100.3 x 82.9 cm. New York, The Frick Collection, Henry Clay Frick Bequest, inv. 1906.1.71 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Rembrandt,  Large Self-Portrait, 1652, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie
Fig. 5 Rembrandt, Large Self-Portrait, 1652, oil on canvas, 112 x 8.15 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, inv. 411 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Rembrandt (?),  Full-Length Self-Portrait, 1652, Amsterdam, Museum het Rembrandthuis
Fig. 6 Rembrandt (?), Full-Length Self-Portrait, 1652, pen and brown ink, 20.3 x 13.4 cm. Amsterdam, Museum het Rembrandthuis (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Hans Holbein,  Portrait of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Mil, 1538, London, National Gallery
Fig. 7 Hans Holbein, Portrait of Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, 1538, oil on panel, 179.1 x 82.6 cm. London, National Gallery, inv. NG2475 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Rembrandt,  Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 8 Rembrandt, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653, oil on canvas 143.5 x 136.5 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, iinv. 61.198 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Wenzel Hollar, after Hans Holbein,  Portrait of a Man with a Beard, Beret, and Chain, 1647, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Fig. 9 Wenzel Hollar, after Hans Holbein, Portrait of a Man with a Beard, Beret, and Chain, 1647, etching. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Footnotes

  1. 1. Arnold Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlandtsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen (Amsterdam: Weduwe Houbraken, 1718–21), 2:18.

  2. 2. Literature on the Arundel collection is vast, but especially good are the studies of David Howarth, including “The Arundel Collection: Collecting and Patronage in England in the Reigns of Philip III and Philip IV,” in The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations Between Spain and Great Britain, 1604–1655, exh. cat., ed. Jonathan Brown and Jonathan Elliot (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 69–86.

  3. 3. A convenient reference with relevant literature on Lady Arundel is Michelle DiMeo, “Howard, Aletheia, Countess of Arundel, of Surrey, and of Norfolk, and suo jure Baroness Furnivall, Baroness Talbot, and Baroness Strange of Blackmere (d. 1654),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., January 2008, ed. Lawrence Goldman. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/94252 (accessed December 14, 2015).

  4. 4. Juliet Claxton, “The Countess of Arundel’s Dutch Pranketing Room,” Journal of the History of Collections 22, no. 2 (November 2010): 187–96; first published online August 17, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhp035

  5. 5. On Junius, see, most recently, Thijs Weststeijn, Art and Antiquity in the Netherlands and Britain: The Vernacular Arcadia of Franciscus Junius (1591–1677) (Leiden: Brill, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004283992

  6. 6. Joachim von Sandrart, Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau- Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste, vol. 2 (Nuremberg, 1675). On Arundel hosting artists in England, see Craig Ashley Hanson, The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 24ff; and Christiane Hille, Visions of the Courtly Body: The Patronage of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, and the Triumph of Painting at the Stuart Court  (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 20–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/9781920338367http://dx.doi.org/10.1524/9783050062556

  7. 7. The 1655 inventory was published in Lionel Cust and Mary L. Cox, “Notes on the Collections Formed by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, K.G.,” Burlington Magazine 19, no. 101 (August 1911): 278–86. The beginning of the inventory was mistakenly omitted from the original publication and published subsequently. See Mary L. Cox, “Inventory of the Arundel Collection,” Burlington Magazine 19, no. 102 (September 1911): 323–25.

  8. 8. Walter Liedtke. Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art  (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 1:ix, 295–98, no. 68, color pl. 68, fig. 80.

  9. 9. Paul Crenshaw, “Frans Hals’s Portrait of an Older Judith Leyster,” College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, February 10–13, 2010. The papers from this session on “Old Women, Witches and Old Wives” and additional ones will be published together, edited by Frima Fox Hofrichter.

  10. 10. The identification of Molenaer is easier, as the likeness to his many visages in his genre paintings is keen. The likeness of the Met’s portrait to Leyster’s Self-Portrait in Washington, D.C. (National Gallery of Art) is more problematic, but one must remember that the National Gallery’s painting was created twenty years earlier, before Leyster had experienced five pregnancies.

  11. 11. Joris Dik, “Scientific Analysis of Historical Paint and the Implications for Art History and Art Conservation: The Case Studies of Naples Yellow and Discoloured Smalt,” PhD thesis (Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences [HIMS], University of Amsterdam, 2003), esp. chap. 2, confirmed earlier studies concluding that lead antimonate yellow was exceedingly rare in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, but, curiously, he did find it present in pottery samples from Holland at this time (p. 31).

  12. 12. Van de Wetering, Ernst, et al. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings IV (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 413-15.

  13. 13. See for example Elizabeth Cropper, The Domenichino Affair: Novelty, Innovation and Theft in Seventeenth Century Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), esp. chap. 3, “Imitation, Influence, Invention: The Carracci and Tasso”; Maria Loh, Titian Remade: Repetition and the Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2007); and Eric Jan Sluijter, Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam (1630–1650) (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/oculi.14

Bibliography

Claxton, Juliet.  “The Countess of Arundel’s Dutch Pranketing Room.” Journal of the History of Collections22, no. 2 (November 2010): 187–96. First published online August 17, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhp035

Cust Lionel,  and Mary L. Cox. “Notes on the Collections Formed by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, K.G.” Burlington Magazine19, no. 101 (August 1911): 278–86.

Cox, Mary L.  “Inventory of the Arundel Collection.” Burlington Magazine 19, no. 102 (September 1911):. 323–25.

Crenshaw, Paul. “Frans Hals’s Portrait of an Older Judith Leyster.” Paper presented at the College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, February 10–13, 2010.

Cropper, Elizabeth. The Domenichino Affair: Novelty, Innovation and Theft in Seventeenth Century Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Dik, Joris.  “Scientific Analysis of Historical Paint and the Implications for Art History and Art Conservation: The Case Studies of Naples Yellow and Discoloured Smalt.” PhD thesis, Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS), University of Amsterdam, 2003.

DiMeo, Michelle. “Howard, Aletheia, Countess of Arundel, of Surrey, and of Norfolk, and suo jure Baroness Furnivall, Baroness Talbot, and Baroness Strange of Blackmere (d. 1654).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, January 2008. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/94252

Hanson, Craig Ashley. The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/9781920338367

Hille, Christiane. Visions of the Courtly Body: The Patronage of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, and the Triumph of Painting at the Stuart Court . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1524/9783050062556

Houbraken, Arnold. De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlandtsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen. Amsterdam: Weduwe Houbraken, 1718–21.

Howarth, David. “The Arundel Collection: Collecting and Patronage in England in the Reigns of Philip III and Philip IV.” In The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations Between Spain and Great Britain, 1604–1655, exh. cat., edited by Jonathan Brown and Jonathan Elliot, 69–86. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Liedtke, Walter. Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art . 2 vols. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Loh, Maria. Titian Remade: Repetition and The Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2007.

Sandrart, Joachim von. Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau- Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste . . ., vol. 2. Nuremberg, 1675.

Sluijter, Eric Jan. Rembrandt’s Rivals: History Painting in Amsterdam (1630–1650).  Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins , 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/oculi.14

Weststeijn, Thijs. Art and Antiquity in the Netherlands and Britain: The Vernacular Arcadia of Franciscus Junius (1591–1677) . Leiden: Brill, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004283992

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DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.7
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Paul Crenshaw, "Rembrandt and Hals Visit the Arundel Collection," Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9:1 (Winter 2017) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.7