Artist: Nicolaes Eliaszoon Pickenoy
Date: 1627
Size: 98 x 73 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
The attribution of this pendant pair to Pickenoy is very persuasive. One feature of his style is the relatively soft modelling. Both portraits are dated 1627, when according to the inscriptions Maerten Reijnertsz Rey (1595/96-1632) (shown here) was 32 years old and his wife (see SK-A-699), Maria Joachimsdr Swartenhont (1598-1631), 27. Maerten Rey and Maria Swartenhont married in 1617 and had three daughters.4 Rey was a wine merchant and steward of the Crossbowmen’s Hall. He is shown halflength turned to the right, and in his right hand he is holding up a rummer of white wine. Quite a few portraits from the early 17th century show men with a glass in the hand, such as Cornelis Ketel’s portrait of the wine-gauger Vincent Jacobsen.5 Ketel and Pickenoy were not painting a merry drinker or an allegory of Taste, but a portrait of a man with an attribute of his trade. What is remarkable is the oval shape of the two portraits. On the back of one of the panels are traces that point to the use of a pair of compasses, which the panel maker may have used to saw a proper oval. However, it is not possible to say for certain whether the shape is original. Life-size oval portraits were exceptional in the Netherlands in the 1620s, and there are very few of them even in Pickenoy’s oeuvre.6 It was only in the 1630s that the type became popular, chiefly in Amsterdam, where Rembrandt used it several times.7 It looks as if Pickenoy made the pose fit the oval shape. The heads of the figures are situated high up in the picture, and much of the bodies are visible. Pickenoy was very successful in imparting liveliness to his sitters. In the man’s portrait that is largely due to the glass of wine he is holding up close to the edge of the picture. The glove that the woman is holding in her portrait is actually cut off by the edge. The paintings remained with the family for a long time before being bequeathed to the Rijksmuseum at the end of the 19th century.8 Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 233.
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