HELST, Bartholomeus van der

Van der Helst’s life-size Abraham del Court and Maria de Keersegieter of 1654 shows him at the top of his form as a portraitist of private patrons. The drawing of the elegant married couple seated in a garden is faultless and the rendering of their costly garments, the very last word in haut couture among the elite circles, is rendered with technical perfection. Nothing is known about del Court as a connoisseur of painting but he certainly was an expert on textiles. He was a cloth merchant and served a term as an official of Amsterdam’s textile guild. He must have taken as much delight as his wife did in van der Helst’s depiction of Maria’s silvery-white satin gown enhanced by the play of light on the silver braid along its front and lower edge. The thorny rose Maria holds probably alludes to the pains and pleasures of love, the fountain in the garden to fecundity, and del Court’s gentle support of his wife’s wrist to the concord of their joined status.

Van der Helst received more commissions than he could handle and not all of them attain the high quality of the del Court double portrait. Marked variations in execution of signed paintings done in the same year signal that he employed assistants to help him meet the demand. One is documented: in I652 Marcus Waltersz (or Waltusz) agreed to paint and serve him for twelve months for three guilders, three stuivers per week. His contract stipulated he was to work for ten hours a day during the summer months and from dawn until dusk during the winter. For his part van der Helst agreed to teach him as much as possible, and further, on days when Marcus was scheduled to act at the theatre his master was to give him the afternoon free without docking his weekly wage. Nothing more is known about Marcus’s activity as an aspiring painter or actor.

Van der Helst succeeded Rembrandt as the favourite portraitist of the city. Most of his patrons were wealthy members of the regent class, admirals, or military heroes. He painted also portraits in historical guise.

Pastoral costumes were among the favourite historical guises. From the early 1620s, nobles in particular chose to be represented as the protagonists of Italian and Dutch pastoral plays. The ravishing portrait of Anna du Pire indicates the special resources of pastoral portraiture. Du Pire is wrapped in swath of red, blue, and white silk, bedecked with pearls and a red feather headdress. Her d�collet� leaves little to the imagination. A respectable woman could be represented in this way only for sound narrative reasons, and they are suggested by the bow and arrows and the shell filled with water. Viewers familiar with the famous play “Granida” (1615) by Pieter Cornelisz Hooft would have recognized these elements as references to its title heroine, a princess lost during the hunt who receives water from an adoring shepherd. The portrait indeed has a shepherd pendant of her husband, the painter himself, and the pair form a romantic marriage set.

Although du Pire’s identification with Granida justifies her attire, even for a pastoral portrait this painting teeters on the edge of proper representations of actual people. Because she was van der Helst’s wife, probably only he and his intimates, acquainted with his innovative portraiture, had access to her portrait.

In the second half of the 1640s not a single Dutch portraitist, including Van der Helst, tried to emulate Rembrandt’s revolutionary achievement, the Night Watch. Their group portraits are all clearly and sharply delineated collective portraits giving each man his due. The interest of Dutch artists and their clients in detailed portrayals won the day. The inclination towards brighter colouring which became popular during the forties by the influence of Van Dyck’s followers, came to the fore and found favour with the public.

This group portrait shows the banquet held by the St George’s Guard to celebrate the Peace of M�nster which put an end to the Eighty Years’ War on the 18th of June, 1648. In this painting Van der Helst succeeded in portraying no fewer than 25 people grouped around a table. To the right we see the captain (holding a silver drinking-horn) and the lieutenant congratulating each other on the successful outcome. On the drum, the artist painted a sheet of paper bearing the words of a poem in praise of peace.

This unusually large, life-size family portrait was commissioned by Pieter van de Venne, a wealthy burgher of Amsterdam. Theatrical illumination ensures that all attention is directed at the family; their surroundings are only cursory indicated.

In 1657, the leaders of the United Provinces sent warships under the command of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter (1607-1676) to the Spanish port of C�diz. where the Dutch captured two French pirate ships to prevent the pirates from obstructing Dutch trade. as a reward for their success, the admiralty of Amsterdam gave De Ruyter and three of his captains, Gideon de Wildt (1624-1665) among them, a gold chain and medallion. It was probably to mark this occasion that De Wildt commissioned a pair of portrait of himself and his wife from the Amsterdam elite’s favourite painter, Bartholomeus van der Helst.

In this portrait, behind the three-quarter figure are three warships, sailing beneath a cloud-strewn sky. As was common practice in the studios of the time, such traditional details in portraits of naval commanders were generally executed by artists who specialized in marine scenes. In this painting, the task was probably assigned to Willem van de Velde the Younger.

The painting shows an unidentified gentleman before a balustrade with a distant view of Haarlem beyond. Its pendant of the same size portrays a lady, presumably his wife.

The background in both paintings is the work of another artist, probably one of Jacob van Ruisdael’s followers.

The sitter, half-length, wearing a white dress, was traditionally identified as the painter’s wife.

The painting shows an unidentified lady before a balustrade with a view out to sea beyond. Its pendant of the same size portrays a gentleman, presumably her husband.

The background in both paintings is the work of another artist, probably one of Jacob van Ruisdael’s followers.

This portrait of a sixty-two-year-old man, like others by Van der Helst dating from the mid- to late 1640s, was influenced by Rembrandt’s most straightforward examples of the 1630s and early 1640s. The placement of the sitter to the left of centre, and his slight turn toward the viewer’s right, suggests that the portrait was originally provided with a pendant. The Portrait of a Lady Aged Fifty-four in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, was proposed as a fitting pendant.

A marked change in the Dutch portraitist’s conception of his task becomes apparent in the work of Bartholomeus van der Helst. His portraits take on some of Van Dyck’s elegance, which began to affect Dutch art about 1640. Adriaen Hanneman (1610-71) returned to The Hague with Van Dyckian motifs about 1637, after more than a ten-year stay in England, and the portraits he and his pupils made for courtly patrons helped to set the new fashion.

Van der Helst’s marriage in Amsterdam in 1636 suggests he had settled there by then. In the following year, at the age of twenty-four, he was commissioned to paint the Regents of the Walloon Orphanage, his earliest existing dated work. Its crowded composition and dry touch recall the portraits of Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy; these similarities are the basis for the hypothesis that Pickenoy was his teacher.

In style and execution this painting is a typical work of Bartholomeus van der Helst’s mature years. The woman tunes a theorbo-lute, and a viola da gamba rests in front of her. Some scholars have considered the picture to be an allegory or personification of music. Later writers have treated the painting as a genre scene, comparing works by Gerrit Dou, Johannes Vermeer, and other contemporary artists. The picture is very close in date and in its main motifs to Vermeer’s Woman with a Lute near a Window. However, it was also suggested that the artist’s wife, Anna du Pire might have served as a model for the Musician.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 14 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Concerto for harp, lute and theorbo in B flat major