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| Paulus Verschuur (1606–1667) |
Paulus Verschuur served seven terms as burgomaster of Rotterdam and was also a director of the East India Company. Despite Hals's reputation for conviviality, his mature portraits are often sober and restrained in all but their brushwork. This may have influenced Verschuur's choice of the artist over a fashionable portraitist of Rotterdam or The Hague, but the sitter also had family and business ties to Hals's city of Haarlem.
Catalogue Entry
In this dignified portrait of 1643, Paulus Verschuur, a wealthy merchant of Rotterdam, is seen at the age of thirty-seven. His father, Joost Verschueren, moved from Antwerp to Rotterdam and established a textile firm. Paulus married Maria van Berckel (d. 1654) in 1631, and three years later combined his family business with the textile firm of his father-in-law, Gerard van Berckel. Verschuur was also very active in civic affairs, serving as a member of the Rotterdam City Council in 1642; as a burgomaster in 1649–50, 1653–54, 1660–61, and 1667; and as council deputy to the States of Holland in 1646, 1648–49, and on several later occasions. His other offices included church-warden (1646–48), commissioner of the East India Company (1651), commissioner for water rights (1656), and surveyor of manufactories (1658–59 and 1662–65).
The Rotterdam artist Pieter van der Werff (1661/65–1722) made a free copy (oval, 82 x 68 cm) after this picture in about 1700 as part of a series of paintings depicting the directors of the Rotterdam chamber of the Dutch East India Company. It is on loan to the Historisch Museum, Rotterdam, from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. A4501).
Valentiner (1921) believed that the figure's turn to the right implied a pendant portrait. This is entirely plausible, to judge from the compositions of other pair portraits by Hals. Grimm (1972) suggests the Portrait of a Woman (80 x 64.1 cm), formerly in an English private collection as a possible pendant, stating that it appears to have been cut down on all sides. In the absence of technical evidence or a portrait known to be of Maria van Berckel, it is impossible to support or dismiss Grimm's hypothesis.
[2011; adapted from Liedtke 2007]
Provenance
Adolf Josef Bösch, Döbling, near Vienna (until d. 1884; his estate sale, Kaeser, Plach, and Kohlbacher, Döbling, April 28, 1885, no. 20, as "Männliches Portrait," for fl 14,010 to Kaiser); [Durand-Ruel, New York, in 1891]; Mrs. Collis P. (Arabella D.) Huntington, later [from 1913] Mrs. Henry E. Huntington, New York (by 1909–d. 1924); her son, Archer M. Huntington, New York (1924–26)
Artist:
Frans Hals (Dutch, Antwerp 1582/83–1666 Haarlem)
Date:
1643
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
46 3/4 x 37 in. (118.7 x 94 cm)
Classification:
Paintings
Credit Line:
Gift of Archer M. Huntington, in memory of his father, Collis Potter Huntington, 1926
Copyright Image
https://images.metmuseum.org
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