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Town Hall of Haarlem with the Entry of Prince Maurits

Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (Dutch, 1597–1665)
Pieter Post (Dutch, 1608–1669)
about 1630

Medium/Technique Oil on panel
Dimensions 39.4 × 50.8 cm (15 1/2 × 20 in.)
Credit Line Gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art
Accession Number2019.2087
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
Pieter Saenredam is best known as a painter of churches and town halls. Here, he combines an exact rendering of Haarlem’s town hall with the depiction of an historic event: the triumphal entry of Maurits, Prince of Orange, into the city in 1618. In that year, the Dutch Republic was torn by political strife between the Remonstrants (the liberal faction of the Calvinist church) and Maurits’s supporters, the stricter Counter-Remonstrants. This painting is a collaboration between Saenredam and Pieter Post, who added the figures.

ProvenanceBy 1765, Johannes Enschedé (b. 1708 – d. 1780), Haarlem [see note 1]; May 30, 1786, posthumous Enschedé sale, Tako Jelgersma, Haarlem, lot 11. Pieter Cornelis, Baron van Leyden (b. 1717 – d. 1788), Leiden; by descent to his son, Diederik, Baron van Leyden (b. 1744 – d. 1810), Leiden and Amsterdam; 1804, collection sold en bloc to Alexandre-Joseph Paillet (dealer; b. 1743 – d. 1814), Paris, Louis Bernard Coclers (dealer; b. 1741 – d. 1817), Amsterdam, and Égide de Lespinasse de Langeac (dealer, b. 1752 – d. 1839), Paris; November 5-8, 1804, Paillet, Coclers, and Lespinasse de Langeac sale, Joseph-Alexandre Paillet and Gregoire-Hippolyte Delaroche, Paris, lot 81, to Lespinasse de Langeac; January 16-18 , 1809, Lespinasse de Langeac sale, Joseph-Alexandre Paillet and Gregoire-Hippolyte Delaroche, Paris, lot 110, to Joseph-Alexandre Paillet; December 9-11, 1811, Paillet sale, Joseph-Alexandre Paillet and Gregoire-Hippolyte Delaroche, Paris, lot 62, to Guillaume-Jean Constantin (dealer; b. 1755 – d. 1816), Paris; November 18, 1816, posthumous Constantin sale, Pérignon and Chariot, Paris, lot 296, to Alexis Delahante (dealer; b. 1767 – d. 1837), Paris. April 24, 1838, anonymous sale, De Vries, Amsterdam, lot 50, to John Chaplin (dealer; b. 1788), London; March 2, 1839, Chaplin sale, Christie’s, London, lot 90, to Elfred Blaker (dealer; b. 1804 – d. 1856), London. Sir Maziere Brady, 1st Bart., Lord Chancellor of Ireland (b. 1796 – d. 1871), Dublin; July 1, 1871, Brady estate sale, Christie's, London, lot 123, to Henry George Bohn (b. 1796 – d. 1884), North End House, Twickenham, Middlesex [see note 2]; March 20, 1885, posthumous Bohn sale, Christie's, London, lot 189, to Henry Louis Bischoffsheim (b. 1829 - d. 1908) and Clarissa Bischoffsheim (b. 1837 – d. 1922), Bute House, London [see note 3]; May 7, 1926, posthumous Bischoffsheim sale, Christie’s, London, lot 10, to Arthur Tooth and Sons, London; February 10, 1927, sold by Arthur Tooth and Sons to Frits Lugt (b. 1884 - d. 1970), Rustenhoven, Maartensdijk and Amsterdam; April 1927, sold by Frits Lugt to P. Lugt, Haarlem and Brussels [see note 4]. J.R. Bier (dealer; d. 1966), Haarlem [see note 5]. 1949 until 1951, M. Franck, New York [see note 6]. By 1954, Wildenstein and Co., New York; 1959, sold by Wildenstein to Johannes Carel Hendrik Heldring (b. 1887 – d. 1962), Oosterbeek [see note 7]; March 27, 1963, posthumous Heldring sale, Sotheby's, London, lot 18, sold for £12,000 to Mrs. Margaret H. Drey (b. 1901 – d. 1964), London; by descent to her son [see note 8]; December 12, 1984, anonymous (Drey) sale, Sotheby's, London, lot 62, to Linda and Gerald Guterman, Bedford, NY; January 14, 1988, Guterman sale, Sotheby's, New York, lot 34. Sold by Wildenstein and Co., New York, to a private collector, the Netherlands; January 28, 2016, anonymous private collector ("Property of a Gentleman") sale, Sotheby's, New York, lot 48, to Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo, Marblehead, MA [see note 9]; 2019, gift of Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 11, 2019)

NOTES:
[1] According to G.K. Nagler, Neues Allgemeines Kunstler-Lexikon, vol. 14 (Munich, 1845), p. 180.

[2] Buyer information is according to the 2016 Sotheby’s catalogue. From 1871 to 1926, the painting was attributed to Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde.

[3] Identified erroneously as from the “Hon. F. Byng’s Collection”, which was being sold at the same sale as the Maziere Brady collection.

[4] Many thanks to Maud Gichané from the Fondation Custodia, Paris, for supplying this information from Frits Lugt’s inventory books. According to Collectie J.C.H. Heldring (Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 1960), cat. no. 33, the painting was lent by P. Lugt to the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, from 1933 to 1945. It was also exhibited at the Museum Boymans Rotterdam, Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (Rotterdam, 1937-1938), cat. 4, as from the collection of P. Lugt.

[5] According to Centraal Museum, Catalogue Raisonné van de werken van Pieter Jansz. Saenredam (Utrecht, 1961), cat. no. 86.

[6] According to Ariane van Suchtelen and Arthur K. Wheelock, Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age (Zwolle, 2008), cat. no. 39.

[7] Heldring lent the painting to the Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Fra Rembrandt til Vermeer (Oslo, 1959), cat. 65. According to the 2016 Sotheby’s catalogue, Heldring acquired the painting from Wildenstein.

[8] According to the 2016 Sotheby’s catalogue.

[9] Provenance information between 1988 and 2016 is according to the 2016 Sotheby’s catalogue and Frederik J. Duparc, Dutch and Flemish Masterworks: From the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection (Boston, 2020), p. 99.