''Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by the
Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals
Frans Hals the Elder (, , ; – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem.
Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group ...
, painted around 1635 and now in the
Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the St ...
, in
Amsterdam. It is considered a pendant to the portrait of Feyntje's husband
Lucas de Clercq.
Life
Feyntje van Steenkiste was born in
Haarlem
Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...
as the daughter of a Mennonite potash merchant and became engaged to Lucas, also a Mennonite potash merchant, on 8 January 1622.
[Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste]
in the RKD Together they had three children, Janneke, Passchina, and Pieter, who joined his father in his business. Feyntje was buried 3 March 1640, and Lucas remarried Adraentje Keijser the same year on 18 September.
Painting
Feyntje's portrait was painted nine years after her marriage to Lucas in 1622, aged 18. Unlike Hals' other wedding portraits of women, she is wearing a sober Mennonite dress without lace wrist collars. Her dress is however made with many buttons and edged with pleats that indicate the expense of the cut. Her millstone collar is noticeable for its extra tightly folded figure-eight loops. She wears her hair covered by a winged diadem cap that is edged with lace trim. She is not wearing any jewelry. Her ensemble is very similar to the portrait of another, unnamed sitter for Hals:
Two Mennonite brides of Haarlem of the 1630s
File:Frans Hals - Portrait of a woman with glove in right hand.jpg
File:Frans Hals - Feyntje van Steenkiste - WGA11127.jpg
Feyntje's portrait was documented by
Hofstede de Groot
Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (9 November 1863 – 14 April 1930), was a Dutch art collector, art historian and museum curator.
Life
He was born in Dwingeloo and spent some time in Switzerland in his youth due to weak lungs, where he learned Germa ...
in 1910, who wrote:
166. FEYNTJE VAN STEENKISTE (born 1604), wife of Lucas de Clercq. M. 25. Three-quarter-length, life size. She stands almost facing the spectator but slightly inclined to the left. She looks at the spectator. At her left is a chair. Her hands, holding her gloves, are clasped in front of her. She wears a white cap, a black dress with a small white ruff, and a little lace on the sleeves. The colouring is similar to that of 165. The hands are painted with exceptional breadth and accuracy ee 165.Inscribed on the left, " AETAT SVAE 31. ANo 1635."; canvas, 49 inches by 37 inches. See Moes, Iconographia Batava, No. 7550. Engraved by C. E. Taurel. Given by the De Clercq family to the city of Amsterdam, 1891. In the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1907 catalogue, No. 1087; exhibited on loan since 1891.
Hofstede de Groot listed it as a pendant of Lucas's portrait, and in 1974
Seymour Slive
Seymour Slive (September 15, 1920 – June 14, 2014) was an American art historian, who served as director of the Harvard Art Museums from 1975 to 1984. Slive was a scholar of Dutch art, specifically of the artists Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Ja ...
listed these as pendants and remarked on Nicolaes' unusual relaxed pose leaning over the back of a chair, and that Sara's headress was similar to that of women in the 1630s, including others by Hals.
[Frans Hals, by Seymour Slive, 1974 a catalog raisonné of Hals works by Seymour Slive: Volume Three, the catalogue, National gallery of Art: Kress Foundation, Studies in the History of European Art, London - Phaidon Press, 1974 on Portrait of a Woman; catalog number 86 & 87, page 52]
Wedding Pendant
File:Frans Hals - Lucas de Clercq - WGA11125.jpg
File:Frans Hals - Feyntje van Steenkiste - WGA11127.jpg
See also
*
List of paintings by Frans Hals
References
{{ACArt
Steenkiste
Paintings in the Rijksmuseum
1635 paintings
Steenkiste