11 BAARTJEN MAERTENS, WIFE OF HERMAN DOOMER Oil on oak, reinforced, 76 x 56 cm. Signed at the bottom on the left, in the background: Rembrandt. f. 1640 Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Inv. No. 729. Acquired c. 1797.
It was not until 1909 that the figure in this undated portrait was identified as Herman Doomer’s wife, a cabinetmaker who supplied Rembrandt with his frames, and whom the artist painted in 1640. Their son, Lambert Doomer, a landscape painter, was, moreover, one of Rembrandt’s students. With this portrait, the artist bequeathed us a surprising and sympathetic image of a commoner’s wife, typical of the class which Rembrandt felt so at ease with. This work, along with the portrait of Herman Doomer, is unusual in Rembrandt’s art at this time, when most of his paintings were commissioned by the mercantile bourgeoisie. A comforting intimacy and warmth emanates from this work, in spite of the formal dress which the model is wearing. Her welcoming face and eyes, and the hint of a smile on her lips nevertheless fail to disguise her embarrassment in front of the
Page 74: Baartjen Maertens, Wife of Herman Doomer, detail. Below: Herman Doomer, 1640. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
artist’s brush. In the first version of the portrait (visible under X-ray), the model is seen playing with a handkerchief. Rembrandt must have decided, however, that this prop would detract from the overall harmony of the portrait. This is the artist’s first work in which he uses chiaroscuro as a psychological backdrop in order to convey the figure’s inner, private world. At the beginning of the 1630s, Rembrandt employed stark contrasts in light to “dramatise” his compositions. Starting with Baartjen’s portrait, the artist came to use this perfectly mastered technique in every portrait. The transition from light to dark in the painting is hardly visible, since the artist proceeded to paint with overlapping, semitransparent strokes, creating a glazed impression, rendering the progression from one colour to another practically imperceptible. Slight shadows glide across the model’s face, and the reflection of the white collar on the cheeks gives them a faint sylph-like halo. Following their mother’s last wishes, the Doomer children had five copies of Rembrandt’s two portraits made, of which a few have survived down to the present day.
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