A rare reunion has taken place at the Nivaagaard Collection in Denmark, as the museum has found the image of a woman who for nearly 200 years has been missing from a 17th-century family portrait.
Double portrait of a father and a son (1626), painted by the Flemish artist Cornelis de Vos in luminous color, sees a resplendent duo in bourgeois garb, the son tenderly shaking his father’s hand. But part of a dress, protruding from the lower right corner of the picture, for a long time indicated that the picture was missing a figure – most likely a mother, who had been cut off at some point.
A research team, set up by the museum to study its Dutch Baroque collection, has duly set out to find this woman who disappeared last year.
They started with a 1966 curatorial report from the National Gallery of Denmark, which provided another vital clue. The volume contained photographs of the painting without its frame following a restoration, revealing part of a woman’s arm, complete with an elaborate cuff. Her hand, with one finger encircled by an expensive ring, held a pair of embroidered gloves lined with red velvet.
One frameless Double portrait of a father and a son (1626), with a woman’s hand visible on the right. Photo: Nivaagaard Collection.
Detail of a woman’s hand holding a pair of embroidered gloves. Photo: Screenshot of the Nivaagaard Collection short film, The lost woman with the brown eyes.
“We began our research by looking for matches among all the seated women in de Vos’s work”, says Jorgen Wadum, researcher and special consultant of the museum. “It revealed dozens of women among the archives of RKD [the Netherlands Institute for Art History] and the Getty Research Institute.
Wadum then did the following logical thing: he Googled “Cornelis de Vos portrait of a woman” – and he found it. “It was totally unexpected!” he said.
Cornelis de Vos, Portrait of a woman (1626), unrestored. Photo: Nivaagaard Collection.
His research had led him to de Vos Portrait of a woman (1626), an image of which appeared in a 2016 interview with Dutch art dealer Salomon Lilian. In 2014, Lilian acquired the work at an auction at Christie’s London, and what’s more, had it cleaned and restored.
For the Nivaagaard team, the links between the two paintings were obvious. The elegant lady depicted in Lilian’s painting wore a millstone collar similar to that of the father in Double portrait; his brown eyes also matched those of the young son. The restoration also revealed that the brown background of Portrait of a woman was just a simple painting; the woman was actually standing against a landscape, filled with some distant poplars and heavy clouds.
Cornelis de Vos, Portrait of a woman (1626), after restoration. Photo: Nivaagaard Collection.
It was this backdrop that aligned with that of Double portrait, making it an undeniable match. “Fortunately, Lilian had the painting restored,” Wadum said. “Otherwise, we may have missed the link to our double portrait.”
Portrait of a woman is significantly smaller than Double portrait, its height only less than half of the tallest work. Researchers believe the original family portrait may have been split into two paintings, possibly after sustaining damage, circa 1830-1859. Double portrait was acquired by Danish businessman and Nivaagaard founder Johannes Hage in 1907.
The reunited family portrait. Photo: The Nivaagaard Collection
The team also continues to research the identity of the family as well as the provenance of the family portrait. They focused on the sale in 1802 of a painting titled A family photo of three portraits of De Vosin London, a canvas which would reappear at various other auctions in England between 1812 and 1830. At these later sales, the portrait was curiously renamed or described as A burgomaster, his wife and his son by De Vos (bourgmestre means the mayor of a city).
“Is this merely an interpretation by the auctioneer, or did the lost upper and lower right corners of the canvas contain an inscription?” said researcher Angela Jager. “In any case, the ruling elite are exactly the kind of clientele one would expect for a monumental family portrait from the sought-after portrait painter.”
As research continues, the Nivaagaard Collection has acquired Portrait of a woman with a grant from the New Carlsberg Foundation. The museum will display the two portraits as part of its collection of paintings, illustrating what museum director Andrea Rygg Karberg called “a huge scoop for the history of Dutch Baroque art”.
Speaking of the reunited family portrait, he added, “The three subjects take on an entirely new dimension, depth and glow when viewed together as originally intended, rather than isolated from each other.”
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