Image scanned from a transparency and color-corrected by Pat Cagney.

Portrait of Emerentia (Immetje) Groot (1619-1683), aged 35

Artist Abraham Liedts (Dutch, 1604 - 1668)

Dateca. 1655

MediumOil on panel

DimensionsOverall: 47 3/4 x 34 1/2 in. (121.3 x 87.6 cm)
Overall, Frame: 54 x 42 in. (137.2 x 106.7 cm)

ClassificationsEuropean art

Credit LineGift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

Object number71.451

Terms

Woman

Collections

European Art before 1945

On View

Not on view

DescriptionThis is an oil on wood panel painting. It is a three quarter length portrait of a lady, Emeretia (Immetje) Groot (1619-1683). She stands showing the viewer a watch in her right hand on a blue ribbon. The watch is gold octagon in shape and it is open to either 6 o'clock or 12:30. She is dressed in a large black dress with white collar and cuffs. The collar has tassels on the cuffs. She is wearing a white cap perhaps sewn with pearls. At the back of her neck is a blue ribbon tied in a bow. Her right index finger has a square cut jewel in a gold ring. In contrast to her plain clothes she wears a thick gold necklace with large medallion. She wears dangling earrings and her left hand holds gloves with an elaborate ruffle. The background is dark, but the outline of curtains is still visible. In the upper right corner, there is a small oval with a ship illustrated.
Label TextAbraham Liedts Dutch (active ca. 1652-1660) Portrait of a Woman Holding a Watch Oil on panel Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.451 This handsome portrait of a woman has been in storage almost continuously since it was donated in 1971. At the time it arrived, its authorship was uncertain, and for decades the Museum has described it as the work of an unknown, 17th-century Dutch painter. Recent research by the Museum's curatorial staff suggested that the artist might well be Abraham Liedts, a portrait painter active in the town of Hoorn, in the northern Netherlands, in the 1650s and early 1660s. To test that theory, in 2004 the staff sent photographs of the portrait to the Netherlands Institute for Art History in The Hague, which houses a vast photo archive and database for Dutch art. The Institute confirmed the theory, noting that the painting's style and handling compared closely to those of Liedts's documented portraits, among them his 1659 portrait of Brigitta de Groot, today in the Westfries Museum, Hoorn (see illustration on gallery label). Located on the Zuiderzee some forty miles north of Amsterdam, Hoorn was one of the most important port cities in 17th-century Holland. In 1602, together with Amsterdam and four other Dutch cities, Hoorn helped found the East India Company, which dramatically expanded the Dutch trade in exotic Eastern goods and brought the city great wealth by the 1660s. Liedts spent much of his known career portraying Hoorn's newly rich patrician class. Though the identity of our sitter has not yet been determined, her fine jewelry and the lace trim on her sleeves, collar, and headdress suggest a woman of means, while the sailing ship adorning the crest in the upper right corner implies a family connection with the maritime trade. Could she be a ship captain's wife? The gold pocket watch in her right hand is both a status symbol and a memento mori, a moralizing symbol that alludes to the fleeting nature of life and the ever-present need to prepare for the hereafter. A recent cleaning of the painting revealed the Latin inscription at the left-AETATIS 35-which records her age as thirty-five. In the 17th century, thirty-five was none too early to cast one's thoughts toward death and the afterlife.