Jan Mijtens specialized in painting group portraits within a landscape setting. This painting depicts Pieter and Sophia van der Graeff with their daughters Machtild, who carries a basket of flowers, and Cornelia, who holds a nautilus shell. A third daughter, Petronella, hovers in the clouds above, a Dutch convention for representing deceased children. She directs a crown of laurel leaves toward her father’s head, who himself died before this painting was completed. Additional symbolic elements include the dog, indicative of marital fidelity, and the act of passing pearls from mother to child, which alludes to virtue. Mijtens was particularly adept at rendering the details of the fashionable and elegant clothing that reflects the affluence of Dutch burghers in the seventeenth century. This painting is signed and dated in the lower right.
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- Titles Portrait of the van der Graeff Family (Proper)
- Artist Jan Mijtens, Dutch, The Hague 1613/1614 - 1670 The Hague
- Medium oil on canvas
- Dimensions 55 1/4 × 64 in. (140.3 × 162.6 cm) frame: 65 × 73 5/8 × 2 3/4 in. (165.1 × 187 × 7 cm)
- Credit Line Museum purchase with funds provided by Mrs. Bernard Steiner, 1985.279
- Work Type painting
- Classification Paintings
- On View
- Signature Recto, to the right of the mother's skirt: Mijtens / 1654.
- Marks None
- Inscription Verso, vertical stretcher bar, top, white chalk: 1 [inscribed in circle] EL 203 Verso, horizontal stretcher bar, right, stenciled in black: EL 203 Verso, horizontal stretcher bar, left: LOT 23 11-12-84 Verso, bottom stretcher bar, center, paper label: Leger Galleries / Art Dealers / 13 Old Bond Street, W.I. / Established 1892 / Title Pieter van der Graaff and his family / in a landscape. / Artist Jan Mytens / Date October 1977 / Old and Modern Masters / Early English Watercolours *The auction catalog for Sotheby's London, July 9, 1975, lot 37 mentions an inscription on the back that gives the names of the two girls as Magtid and Cornelia. This inscription is also mentioned in the Witt Library record for the painting, which has it as with Leger Galleries in 1977. This inscription is no longer visible.
- Provenance Paul Eynard, Rolle, Switzerland [see note 1]. Lucien Baszanger (1890-1971), Geneva, apparently acquired between 1950 and 1953, until at least 1967 [see note 2]. Auctioned as property of a Swiss collector at Christie's London, March 29, 1974, lot 84; Roy Miles, likely Roy Miles (1935-2012) of Roy Miles Gallery, London [see note 3]. Auctioned at Sotheby's, London, July 9, 1975, lot 37 [see note 4]; with dealer Leger Galleries, London, until at least 1977 [see note 5]. Auctioned at Christie's, London, December 11, 1984, lot 23. With dealer Patrick Weiller, Paris; purchased by the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, 1985
1. Paul Eynard, Rolle, is noted in the provenance of the painting in Cent tableaux de la collection Baszanger, Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, 1954/5, p. 25, no. 52. Paul Eynard, author of Le Palais Eynard, Geneva, 1986, is a member of the family that built the palace in Geneva c. 1821 and shortly thereafter a residence in Beaulieu near Rolle. Gabriel Antoine Eynard (1739-1814), a rich merchant in Lyon who took refuge in Rolle, Switzerland, in 1795, and his sons Jean-Gabriel Eynard (1775-1863) and Jacques Eynard (1772-1844) built an important collection of paintings. See Renée Loche, Un cabinet de peintures à Genève au XIXe siècle: La collection Eynard. Essai de reconstitution, Geneva, Musée d'art et d'historie Genève 27, n.s. (1979), pp. 177-221. The BMA painting by Mytens does not appear among those paintings acquired by the collection during the nineteenth century, which are catalogued by Loche. An inscription "EL 203" on the back of the painting could perhaps be an inventory number for Eynard. "EL" does not correspond to any ERR code.
2. Not included in Exposition Maitres anciens hollandais: collection Galerie Baszanger, Gèneve, 1946, nor in Louis Réau, Mâitres anciens de la collection Baszanger, 1950 but included in the exhibition Vijftig werken uit de collectie Baszanger te Genève, Delft, Musée Prinsenhof, 1953, no. 25, pl. vii, and Cent tableaux de la Collection Baszanger, Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, 1954, no. 52. The painting is also included in Louis Réau, Collection Baszanger: Les Mâitres Anciens, 1967, p. 39.
3. Per the results list for the auction, which also lists buyer's names: Roy Miles.
4. Consigned by a dealer in London according to information provided by Sotheby's, see object file.
5. Purchased at the 1975 auction according to information provided by Sotheby's, see object file. Exh. cat. Leger Galleries Apr 1-Apr 30, 1976, no. 1. There is a label on the back of the painting from Leger Galleries, Old and Modern Masters, Early English Watercolors, Oct. 1977. The Witt Library record for the painting has it with Leger Galleries in 1977.
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