Portrait of a Woman, possibly Helena le Maire (1602 ?-after 1657), Pieter Dubordieu, 1638 – (Pieter Du Bordieu) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Pieter Du Bordieu

Date: 1638

Size: 76 x 61 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

This portrait of a woman by Pieter Dubordieu and its pendant of a man (SK-A-2182; also fig. a) entered the Rijksmuseum through the 1905 bequest of Maria Elisabeth van den Brink.5 According to the handwritten labels on the backs of both works, which were probably added in the eighteenth century, the sitters are Anna Broers (1584-1642) and Frank van der Does (1569-?).6 The museum dismissed these identifications almost immediately because the couple would have been considerably older in 1638, the year these paintings were made.7 The dates, poses and placement of the figures show that both fairly uncomplicated portraits were definitely made as a pair. The present likeness is of a slightly higher standard as regards the rendering of the clothing and the depiction of the face. The woman is wearing a shallow but very wide ruff, which was the fashion of the day. The man’s collar and cuff are sober. The light passages in them and his face are broadly brushed, while the treatment of the corresponding parts here is much more subtle. Although dendrochronology has determined that the panels come from two different trees, both pictures have the same year of execution, which removes any shred of doubt that they were conceived as pendants.8 Wuestman suggested that the sitters might be Helena le Maire (1602 ?-after 1657) and Paulus de Hooghe, or Hooge (1611-1674), for there are two wills from the first quarter of the eighteenth century that mention ‘two portraits of the same uncle Paulus de Hooge and his wife’ that were bequeathed in 1713 by Susanna van Cracouw, or Crackouw (1651-1720), to her late husband’s second cousin Johannes Bakhuizen, from whom the Rijksmuseum’s legator was directly descended.9 This identification seems plausible, partly because the couple married in Amsterdam one year before these companion pieces were completed. Dubordieu was still living in Amsterdam in 1637, so he probably then received the commission. An added argument that the portraits mentioned in the wills really are these pendants is that there are no other known likenesses of Helena le Maire.10 Paulus de Hooghe – a button-maker by trade – would have to be 26 or 27 in Dubordieu’s painting, but looks older, possibly because his face has been quite heavily retouched by the artist. The Rijksmuseum’s collection includes another portrait by Dubordieu, which he painted a year earlier.11 All three are clear evidence of the variable quality of his work. Richard Harmanni, 2022 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements