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| Anna van der Aar (born 1576/77, died after 1626) |
Scriverius was a distinguished historian, poet, and scholar of classical literature. His wife, Anna van der Aar, was the daughter of a Leiden city councilman. In this pair of portraits Hals employs the scale, oval format, and illusionistic framing device that for several decades had been common in Dutch portrait prints. The male portrait alone was engraved in 1626, by Jan van de Velde II; impressions would have been sent to scholarly colleagues throughout Europe. The panels were retained as family keepsakes, in which Hals achieved the same vivid effects that he usually described on a much larger scale.
Catalogue Entry
This small portrait and its pendant, Petrus Scriverius (The Met, 29.100.8), are certainly by Hals and are each monogrammed and dated 1626. The sitters lived in Leiden, though Hals would have painted them in Haarlem, where they both had close ties. Anna van der Aar was born in Leiden to Willem Govertsz van der Aar (1540/41–1617), the City Councilman and sheriff, and his first wife, Alijt Claesdr den Hartogh (1542–1579). Anna was raised by Geertje Huijgensdr Duyck (d. 1604), who married Anna's father in 1579, four months after her mother died. In 1599, Anna married the poet and historian Pieter Schrijver (1576–1660), better known by his Latinized name, Petrus Scriverius.
Scriverius's portrait was engraved by Jan van de Velde II in 1626 (The Met, 24.57.27). Below the engraved portrait is a tablet inscribed with an anonymous poem in Latin extolling the sitter's admirable qualities. In the case of pendant portraits of a public figure and his wife, it was normal that (as in this case) only the male portrait would be engraved. That a likeness was made of Anna indicates that the scholar's portrait was not only painted as a modello for a print, but also as a personal keepsake.
A possible portrait of the same woman, at the age of eighteen, was painted in 1595 by Isaac van Swanenburg (1537–1614). Van Swanenburg was the next-door neighbor of Anna's parents. Scriverius wrote a long poem in memory of the artist's son in Jan Orlers's Beschrijvinge der Stad Leyden (Description of the City of Leiden), of 1614.
[2011; adapted from Liedtke 2007]
Provenance
M. J. Caan van Maurik, Oudewater; [Étienne Le Roy, Brussels]; John Waterloo Wilson, Brussels and Paris (by 1873–81; his sale, at his hotel, avenue Hoche, 3, Paris, March 14–16, 1881, no. 57, for Fr 80,000 with pendant [MMA 29.100.8], to Petit); [Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, from 1881]; E. Secrétan, Paris (by 1883–89; his sale, Galerie Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris, July 1–7, 1889, no. 125, for Fr 91,000 with pendant [MMA 29.100.8], to Durand-Ruel for Havemeyer); Mr. and Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York (1889–his d. 1907); Mrs. H. O. (Louisine W.) Havemeyer, New York (1907–d. 1929)
Artist:
Frans Hals (Dutch, Antwerp 1582/83–1666 Haarlem)
Date:
1626
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
8 3/4 x 6 1/2 in. (22.2 x 16.5 cm)
Classification:
Paintings
Credit Line:
H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929
Copyright Image
https://images.metmuseum.org
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