Daniël Haringh (Loosduinen, The Hague, 1641 – 1713 Loosduinen, The Hague)

Portrait of a Gentleman and Portrait of a Lady

Both oil on canvas, 30.6 x 25.7 cm (12 x 10.1 inch); presented in carved and gilt Neoclassical frames, dating to c.1790

The gentleman’s portrait signed ‘D. Haringh’ (lover left)

Provenance
Private collection, United Kingdom

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Daniël Haringh was born in October 1641 in Loosduinen, near The Hague, as the son of the school teacher Elias Haringh and Elijzabeth Sanders.¹ He was taught the art of painting during the 1660s by Arnold van Ravesteyn and Caspar Netscher, who was among the leading portrait painters of the period. In 1669 Haringh became a member of the artists’ society Confrerie Pictura, where he served as warden in the organisation’s governing committee in numerous years. He was also a governor of the Drawing Academy in The Hague. Haringh married Susanna van Winsenburgh in 1672 and was the teacher of Michiel Godijn and Abraham van Hoogstraeten.

Haringh died in impoverished circumstances; according to the artist’s biographer, Johan van Gool, who published his Nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche Kunstschilders en Schilderessen in 1750, Haringh had made a good income by giving drawing lessons to leading members of Dutch society, including the young sons of Count Ernst Wilhelm of Bentheim-Steinfurth - Haringh accompanied the young aristocrats on their hunting expeditions, and neglected his artistic pursuits, which led him to poverty. ‘De opmerking heeft my aen veele exempels doen zien, dat het spreekwoort (zoort by zoort) waerachtig is; en dat het ongelukkig lot van onzen Haring gewonelyk op dien taerling, van dagelyks met de Grooten te vekeren, loopt, vermits de kans te ongelyk is; vooral ten opzichte van Schilders, die hun werk door geen anderen kunnen verrichten, maer zelf hant aen de Penseelploeg moeten slaen,’ according to Van Gool.²

The present portraits are likely to date from the period around 1680-1690, when Haringh was at his most successful. Although the identity of the sitters is lost, they must have been part of The Hague’s elite. A group of seven portraits of Willem Fabricius, his wife Barbara Schas and some of their children, all painted by Haringh around 1683, is preserved in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.³ The present pair of portraits, which are very well preserved, presented in charming late eighteenth-century Neoclassical frames, can also be compared to the portraits of Johan van Bochhoven and his wife Sara Pottey, in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (fig.).⁴

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1. For the artist, see Edwin Buijsen and Charles Dumas, Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: het Hoogsteder lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, The Hague 1998, p. 313.
2. Johan van Gool, Nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche Kunstschilders en Schilderessen, The Hague 1750-51, vol. I, pp. 69-71.
3. All oil on canvas, 51 x 42 cm, H.P. Baard, Frans Halsmuseum Haarlem, Haarlem 1969, p. 30-31.
4. Both oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm, inv. nos. SK-A-1654 and SK-A-1655; P.J.J. van Thiel, All the paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1976, pp. 260-61, repr.