Portrait of Maritge Claesdr Vooght, Frans Hals, 1639 – (Frans Hals) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Frans Hals

Date: 1639

Size: 126 x 93 cm

Technique: Oil On Canvas

The sitter in this three-quarter length portrait of a seated elderly woman was first identified as Maritge Claesdr Vooght at the beginning of the 20th century.11 Although the presence of Prussian blue in the coat of arms means that it must have been added to the painting after about 1720, together with the authentic inscription, which records that the sitter was 62 years old in 1639, there can be no doubt that she is indeed Maritge Claesdr Vooght. A daughter of Claes Albertsz Vooght, owner of the Haarlem Int Hoeffijser brewery, and Volckje Willemsdr Lakeman, she married Pieter Jacobsz Olycan (1572-in or after 1661) in Haarlem in 1595.12 He was the scion of a successful Amsterdam merchant family. Before establishing himself in Haarlem as a brewer, the occupation of his wife’s family, he had studied commerce in Rome and taken part in four trade missions to Spain and the Baltic. In 1618, Prince Maurits appointed him to the city council, and he was elected alderman. Later he would be the city’s delegate to the States-General on six occasions and serve five terms as burgomaster. By the time of his death Olycan had amassed a significant fortune, including 47 properties in Haarlem. The pendant to Maritge Claesdr Vooght’s portrait showing Pieter Jacobsz Olycan is now in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida (fig. a). The pendant pair had been separated in the 19th century. Olycan’s portrait is not inscribed, but was undoubtedly also executed in 1639, one of the years in which he was burgomaster. Recent analysis of both canvases revealed that they have the same weave density and were, therefore, probably cut from the same bolt.13 Olycan’s magisterial likeness is also known to us from a group portrait of the St Hadrian civic guard from around 1630, attributed to Hendrick Pot, in which he appears as the company’s colonel.14 Maritge Claesdr Vooght and Pieter Jacobsz Olycan had 15 children, most of whom, if they survived childhood, married into other wealthy brewing families with political power within the city government. Beginning with the 1625 wedding pendants of the couple’s eldest son Jacob Pietersz Olycan and his wife Aletta Hanemans,15 Hals painted many of Maritge Claesdr Vooght and Pieter Jacobsz Olycan’s children and their spouses over the span of his career.16 Hals also portrayed Maritge Claesdr Vooght’s siblings. Her brother Willem Claesz Vooght features as a colonel in Hals’s group portrait of the arquebusiers’ civic guard of 1627,17 and her sister Cornelia was portrayed by Hals with her husband Nicolaes Woutersz van der Meer in a pendant pair in 1631.18 Maritge is shown in the present portrait in the same seated pose Hals had used for her sister’s portrait.19 The 1631 Portrait of Cornelia Claesdr Vooght was the first time that Hals had used this composition, which was ultimately derived from Titian and Antonio Moro.20 The corner setting of the wall behind both sisters is also the same, although the shadow cast on the wall behind Maritge gives the effect of greater spatial clarity. The rather oldfashioned, but expensive clothing worn by both sisters is also similar, and was entirely appropriate for women of their age and station. The clothing is composed of double cambric caps, large millstone ruffs, stomachers boned at the bottom to make them protrude, and fur-lined vliegers (a long, sleeveless garment worn open).21 Unlike her sister, Maritge holds a prayerbook in her right hand, upside down for her viewers to see, which is probably a reference to her piety. The combination of the standing three-quarter length pose for Pieter Jacobsz Olycan and the seated threequarter length one for Maritge Claesdr Vooght had also been used for the pendant pair of Cornelia and her husband. This combination of seated and standing compositions give the male sitters an imposing presence. Olycan’s portrait has been cut down, mostly on the right side and at the bottom, and the sitter has thereby lost some of his impressive stature. Typical for many of Hals’s pendant pairs, the technique in Olycan’s portrait is looser than in the portrait showing his wife. There are half-length copies of Pieter Jacobsz Olycan and Maritge Claesdr Vooght’s portraits.22 These portraits were probably the ones recorded in the 1850 catalogue of C.G. van Valkenburg’s sale.23 The portraits may have entered the Van Valkenburg collection by way of Agatha van Loo (1649-1728), who married Mattheus van Valkenburg (1641-94) in 1674. Agatha van Loo’s mother was Dorothea Olycan (1613-62), a daughter of Pieter Jacobsz Olycan and Maritge Claesdr Vooght. The provenances of the present portrait and its pendant now in Sarasota are much more difficult to reconstruct. They may be the ones listed in the 1666 inventory of one of the couple’s other daughters, Geertruijd Olycan, who died childless.24 But what happened to them after 1666 remains vague. Like a number of other portraits of Olycan family members, such as those of Jacob Pietersz Olycan ../..