Oil on canvas
102,5 x 135,5 cm.
Art-historical texts and documentation by Rudi Ekkart and Claire van den Donk
During the nineteenth century, the family portrait of a married couple with their two children was part of an extensive collection of paintings owned by the Bremen merchant Theodor Gerhard Lurman. It remained in private hands until it was confiscated by Russian occupying forces and placed in the museum of Halberstadt. Sixty years later, in 2005, the painting was restituted to the heirs of the former owner.
From Cuyp to Van Hooren: a journey of an attribution
In the 1905 exhibition catalogue, the portrait was ascribed to Aelbert Cuyp, an attribution that was not upheld in subsequent art-historical literature. It was listed in the 2023 auction catalogue as a painting by the West Frisian painter Herman Doncker (1595-1650/1651), based on the authority of Dr. Fred Meijer. This attribution must also be dismissed, as the work lacks sufficient stylistic similarities with the authenticated portraits of Doncker, an artist from Hoorn who was primarily active in Haarlem and Enkhuizen.1 Because the work is unsigned and the identity of the depicted family is unknown – making it difficult to determine a geographical or civic context – attribution must rely entirely on stylistic and compositional elements. In this particular case, the painting itself offers a convincing answer: it can be confidently added to the oeuvre of little-known artist Isaack Jacobsz. van Hooren.
Isaack Jacobsz. van Hooren, baptised in Hoorn on 17 July 1616, likely derived his surname from his birthplace. He married in Amsterdam in 1642; after the birth of two children his wife died in 1649. The painter remarried in 1650 but died just two years later, at the age of 35. Isaack van Hooren was buried in Amsterdam on 9 July 1652.
Specialist in group portraiture
The artist’s known oeuvre consists of approximately fifteen paintings dated between 1642 and 1652, a few of which are signed; the remaining works are attributed to him based on stylistic comparison with those signed pieces. Roughly half of Van Hooren’s known paintings are family groups or double portraits of married couples, indicating that he was regarded as a specialist in group portraiture in his time. Among these is a signed and dated 1648 ‘portrait historié’, in which a family with two children is represented in a biblical role – possibly as Isaac and Rebecca or as Jacob and Rachel. Other group portraits, including the painting now at the Argento Gallery, show sitters in contemporary dress, some of the women wearing pleated ruffs that were already falling out of fashion at the time.
A particularly significant work is a signed and dated 1649 group portrait of a married couple with their two sons, sold at auction in 1921 and illustrated that same year by Abraham Bredius in his supplement to the Künstler-Inventare.2 Tragically, the painting was sawed into three separate panels just two years later; three individual works were apparently deemed more marketable than a nearly 120-centimetres-wide family group. As Bernard Renckens revealed in a 1953 article for the magazine Oud-Holland, the portrait of the woman, the panel with the two boys and the segment featuring the head of the man were sold at auctions in London between March and June 1923. The father’s likeness was rigorously cropped to create an attractive image of the woman and the leftover pieces of the panel were likely discarded.3
In the same article, Renckens published images of two more family groups and of a portrait of a young woman, all of which can confidently be attributed to Isaack van Hooren based their close stylistic correspondence to the dismembered family portrait. All of these group portraits are set against finely rendered landscape backgrounds. A striking distinctive feature in these works is the strongly turned heads of some of the figures. Two more comparable paintings can further be added to these three group portraits; both feature families with two children. One group portrait was sold at auction in Berlin in 1934 as a work by Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp and later resurfaced in a private Italian collection where it was attributed – rather optimistically – to Frans Hals.4Despite this ambitious attribution, the painting is significantly weaker, possibly due to wear, than the other comparable piece now at the Argento Gallery. This painting can likely also be dated to between 1645 and 1650.5 It features soberly dressed adults and more brightly clothed children. The boy is shown with a goat – a popular theme in the seventeenth-century pictorial tradition of the portraiture of boys. The emblematic motif symbolises the necessary restraint of the natural predisposition of the growing boy.6
Close to Dirck Dircksz. Santvoort
Shortly before his second marriage, Isaack Jacobsz. van Hooren drew up his last will on 15 April 1650, naming the Amsterdam painter Dirck Dircksz. Santvoort (1609-1680) as guardian of his two children from his first marriage. This suggests a close personal bond between the two artists. While Van Hooren’s work show some influence by Santvoort – himself a painter of a few family portraits – it is unlikely he was Van Hooren’s teacher. Greater affinity points instead to Christiaen Coeuershof (c. 1596-1659), who was active in Enkhuizen from 1639- 1645. That city, located in North Holland, maintained close artistic ties with the nearby town of Hoorn, where Isaack was born.7
A personal note from the gallery
‘Only a limited number of painters were known to depict families in landscapes. The colours light up beautifully when it’s hung and lit well. It feels close, like you are standing right there with them. Van Hooren specialised in group portraits, and this one is among his most refined. Seventeenth-century family paintings are rare in private hands, and this example combines intimacy with a painterly landscape that makes it exceptional.’
Jaco Pieper, owner Argento Gallery
Provenance
Collection Theodor Gerhard Lürman (1789–1865), Bremen; Collection Diedrich Jacob Eduard Kulenkampff (1850–1916), Bremen (exhibition Bremen 1904, no. 141, as by Aelbert Cuyp); inherited by his daughter Gertrud Rimpau, born Kulenkampff, Schloss Langestein (near Halberstadt), until September 1945, when the collection was confiscated by the Soviet Occupation forces; housed in the Städtisches Museum, Halberstadt, inv. no. K1/116; restituted to the Rimpau family, 2005; Sale Munich (Karl & Faber), 14 November 2020, lot 7 (as by Simon Peter Tilemann).
Literature
Katalog der Ausstellung historischer Gemälde aus bremischem Privatbesitz in der Kunsthalle, Bremen, 1904, no. 141 (as by Aelbert Cuyp); Gustav Pauli, Gemälde alter Meister im bremischen Privatbesitz: eine Erinnerung an die Ausstellung in der Kunsthalle zu Bremen in den Monaten Oktober und November 1904, Bremen 1905, pp. 30 and 58 (as by Aelbert Cuyp).
Notes
1. See for Herman Doncker: Rudi Ekkart, Portret van Enkhuizen in de gouden eeuw, Zwolle (Waanders Uitgevers) / Enkhuizen (Zuiderzeemuseum), 1990, pp. 25-30, 60-62, 67, 86-89; Frauke Laarmann, ‘Herman Meindertsz. Doncker – Ein origineller Künstler zweiten Ranges’, Oud Holland 114 (2000), pp. 7-52.
2. Abraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, vol. VII (Nachträge), The Hague (Martinus Nijhoff) 1921, p. 301 and ill. opposite p.300.
3. Bernard J.A. Renckens, ‘Isaac Jacobsz. van Hoorn’, Oud-Holland 68 (1953), pp. 115-116. Renckens erroneously listed the work as dated 1640.
4. Sale Berlijn, 5-12-1934, no. 103. See also: Ludovico Magugliani, Studi sulla pittura Olandese e Inglese, Milano (Editrice La Lanterna) 1954, with ill., as Frans Hals.
5. On the basis of an old photograph, this painting was already linked to Isaack van Hooren decades ago by Rudi Ekkart; and, in an email dated 17 August 2017, Dr. Frauke Laarmann, who had seen the painting shortly before, came to the same attribution to Van Hooren.
6. Jan Baptist Bedaux, The reality of symbols. Studies in the iconology of Netherlandish art 1400-1800, The Hague / Maarsen (Gary Schwartz | SDU) 1990, p. 141; the same, in exh. cat. Pride and Joy, Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, edited by Jan Baptist Bedaux and Rudi Ekkart, Ghent / Amsterdam (Ludion Press), Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum) and Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 2000-2001, pp.218-220, cat. no. 57.
7. For Coeuershoff, see: Rudi Ekkart, Portret van Enkhuizen in de gouden eeuw (see note 1), pp. 23-25 and 84-85. See also: Rudi Ekkart, ‘The Mocking of Christ and Christiaen Coeuershoff’, Acta Historiae Artium 44 (2003) [Festschrift Zsuzsa Urbach], pp. 251-254.
