REINIER DE LA HAYE (The Hague c.1640 – after 1695)
Reinier De La Haye (The Hague c.1640 – after 1695)
Portrait of a Gentleman
Oil on canvas, 40.4 x 34.4 cm (15.9 x 13.5 inch); presented in a modern ebonised frame with gilt slip of Dutch early 18th-century model
Indistinctly signed ‘R Haaye 1692’ (on the parapet on the right)
Provenance
Collection Jean-Joseph Chapuis (1765-1864); private collection, France, acquired there in 1975 by SØR Rusche Collection, until 2020
Literature
~ B. Lymant, Niederländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1: Porträt, Liesborn 1985, pp. 14-17, repr.
~ H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. I, Portraits, Münster/Hamburg/London 1995, pp. 86-87, no. 30, repr.
~ W. Pijbes, M. Aarts, M. J. Bok (et al.), At Home in the Golden Age, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Kunsthal), Zwolle 2008, p. 59, repr.
Exhibited
~ Liesborn, Museum Abtei Liesborn, temporary loan
~ At Home in the Golden Age, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Kunsthal), 9th Febuary – 18th May 2008, no. 42
***
Reinier de La Haye was born in The Hague around 1640 as the son of Hendrik de La Haye and Adriana Smulders.1 He was trained by the leading portrait painter Adriaen Hanneman, and in 1662 he was as member of the Guild of St Luke, suggesting he was working as an independent master by then. He moved to Utrecht around 1669, where he became a member of the guild in that year, and from 1672 to 1674 he worked in Antwerp. De La Haye moved in prominent circles and married twice, firstly to Rembalda Edeler van der Planitz (1636 – c.1674),2 and secondly in 1689 to Anna Catherina Roemers (d.1715).
De La Haye painted a small number of still-lifes, elegant genre scenes and equally elegant portraits of members of the upper echalons of society. Unlike his teacher Hanneman, who painted life size portraits, De La Haye generally produced small portraits, meticulously painted, which were increasingly favoured towards the end of the seventeenth century. Surviving portraits by De La Haye are comparatively rare and show his great talent at depicting rich silks and fabrics. Originally, this portrait was paired with a portrait of a lady (fig).3 The identities of both sitters are sadly no longer known. Though many portraits from the period around 1700 show rather standardised faces, without much personality and character, in this work De La Haye is a brilliant observer of human nature, almost more psychologist than portrait painter.
Paintings by De La Haye are preserved in many leading museums all over the world, including the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Museum der Stadt Gotha and the Staatliches Museum in Schwerin, while a portrait of a lady, possibly Anna Susanna de Neufville, is in the Six Collection in Amsterdam.4
This portrait may be compared to De La Haye’s portrait of Jakub Sokieski, son of the Polish King Jan III Sobieski, preserved in the Museum Lubelskie w Lublienie in Lublin, Poland (fig.).5
1. For the artist, see Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Munich 1992-, vol. 4, p. 617.
2. R.C.C. de Savornin Lohman, ‘Von der Planitz’, De Nederlandsche Leeuw 98 (1981), pp. 126-127.
3. Canvas, 40.5 x 34.5 cm, H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. I, Portraits, Münster/Hamburg/London 1995, pp. 86-87, no. 31, repr.
4. Canvas, dimensions unknown, inv. no. 53, RKD Images no. 15523.
5. Canvas, 40.5 x 31.5 cm, inv. no. S/Mal/597/ML, RKD Images no. 58255.
