An eighteenth-century wooden statuette of a woman holding a child in the Rijksmuseum has long been attributed to Tan-Che-Qua (Chitqua), a Chinese portrait-maker active in Canton (present-day Guangzhou). This attribution proves untenable in light of the observation that Chitqua is not known to have ever worked in wood. The present article proposes an alternative attribution to an anonymous Chinese artist working in the Dutch settlement of Batavia (now Jakarta). This suggestion is corroborated by a technical analysis of the wood used to carve the sculpture, identified as teak, a material readily available on Java and commonly used by indigenous craftsmen to create detailed figures. Copper studs inserted into the woman’s wood-carved ears are possibly akin to similar accessories adorning figures carved in the Central Javanese Loro Blonyo tradition. A Chinese artist working in the artisans’ district of Batavia could easily have been influenced by his Javanese counterparts. A close comparison with contemporary fashion prints identifies the woman’s attire as an exact rendering of European fashion from the period 1778-90. Moreover, the specificity of the woman’s facial features indicates that the statuette is a portrait. This person is far more likely to have lived in Batavia, where European women could live their lives in relative freedom, versus Canton, a city where European women were forbidden entry. The identity of the sitter has not (yet) been ascertained, but the daughters of the governors-generals of Batavia are tenable candidates. By exploring this statuette, the article aims to expand on existing scholarship, while addressing the visibility – or rather, invisibility – of European women and non-European artists in the written history of the eighteenth-century overseas trade in Asia.

The Rijksmuseum Bulletin is the quarterly, peer-reviewed journal presenting scholarly articles that contribute to historical and art-historical research into the Rijksmuseum collections to an international audience of curators, scholars, students, art professionals and enthusiasts.

In 1984, the Stichting Cultuurgeschiedenis van de Nederlanders Overzee (CNO) purchased a portrait of a then unknown captain, painted in 1760 by the artist John Greenwood (Boston 1729-1792 Margate). Since 1994, the portrait has been in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. Until now, the identity of the sitter has remained unknown. The study of Greenwood’s notebook, preserved in the collection of The New York Historical, has made it possible to identify the person in the portrait as Dirk Simonsz (1727-1768), the captain of the ship on which John Greenwood travelled from Suriname to Amsterdam in 1758. This identification is further substantiated by research in the Simonsz family archive in Zaandam and other sources.

This article explores the career and intellectual development of Ida C.E. Peelen, the first female director of a Dutch national museum, and the influence of the museum-reform movement of the nineteen twenties on her curatorial practice. Beginning her career at the Rijksmuseum in 1907, Peelen engaged deeply with contemporary debates on the role of museums, the presentation of objects, and their potential contribution to society. Drawing on ideas propagated in Germany and the Netherlands, she applied these concepts during her tenure at Huis Lambert van Meerten in Delft, where she transformed the museum from an inward-looking, documentarian institution into one focused on offering ‘aesthetic education’. In doing so, she aligned with the reformers' vision that a museum should be ‘fruitful’ for a wide public audience.

At first glance, the publishing and printing of prints in the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Low Countries seems to have been dominated by men, who were sometimes succeeded by their widows. By considering print publishers in the context of the family business and going in search of additional source material, this article demonstrates that the reality was not as black and white as the predominantly male names on surviving prints might suggest. As in other sectors, the work of women in print firms is usually hidden behind the name of a male relative. Their contribution often remains unseen or undervalued and is difficult to quantify in print collections like that of the Rijksmuseum Print Room. Widows – usually the most visible group of women – in general made no changes to the (company) name engraved on the plates when publishing prints from the existing stock, which has not enhanced their visibility. Contemporary documents show that their contribution, as well as that of married women, could indeed have been significant. This article contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the print industry, where the predominantly male names can self-evidently imply female participation, which could have been not merely ‘supporting’ but actually essential for keeping the businesses running.

Ada Hondius-Crone (1893-1996) was a feminist, collector and the donor of more than two hundred objects to the Rijksmuseum and the Vereniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst (vvak). This article examines her contributions to the women’s movement and her acquisitions in the areas of applied and Asian art during the first half of her life, as well as her donations (and rare exchanges and sales) to the Rijksmuseum and the vvak (chief ly) during the second half of her life. It shows how the public worlds of the (Asian and applied) arts and the women’s movement – which sometimes reinforced and overlapped one another – facilitated Hondius-Crone’s public participation in a ‘construed masculine sphere’, and how her acquisitions and donations contributed to the formation and anchoring of her ‘distinctive identity’ as a modern woman possessing an artistic and varied taste. Hondius-Crone’s collection ultimately became fragmented, distributed among various institutions where – in her own estimation – her objects could be ideally represented. As a result, her identity and existence are likewise represented and commemorated in a fragmented manner. Even so, Ada Hondius-Crone’s donations and sales to the Rijksmuseum and the vvak contributed to the development of two new areas of collecting, to wit: Asian art from the nineteen twenties on, and twentieth-century applied art from 1966-68 onwards.

In its collection of twentieth-century art, the Rijksmuseum holds several works by the artist herman de vries. Among them is an exceptional white wall relief from 1967 measuring more than six metres across, on long-term loan from Wageningen University & Research random objectivation v67-36c was created as an art commission for the then newly built accommodation of the Instituut voor Toegepast Biologisch Onderzoek in de Natuur (ITBON), where de vries was working as a research assistant at the time. The relief belongs to an extensive series of artworks de vries called random objectivations, conceived on the basis of mathematical tables of objective-random numbers used by de vries in conducting biological experiments and subsequent evaluations. As revealed by the authors’ research in the ITBON archives, the nature of de vries’s scientific activities during these years centred on the study of ecological networks, an approach first developed in the late nineteen twenties as a new paradigm in the field of biology. By examining the scientific context in which de vries’s relief was created, the authors arrive at a more focused interpretation and ecological contextualization of de vries’s random objectivations.

Most eighteenth-century glass goblets with stippled-engraved decorations were used during the Patriot struggle to toast their political leaders. In 2020, the Rijksmuseum acquired an exceptional glass with the stipple-engraved portrait of the renowned Dutch author Elisabeth Wolff-Bekker. Research into the glass’s provenance revealed it was formerly in the possession of Christiaan Nissen and his wife, Magdalena Greeger, a couple with whom Wolff-Bekker shared a close bond. This friendship endured up until Nissen caused the author’s financial downfall in 1791. An inscription on the glass names the engraver who decorated it, David Wolff, and the person who commissioned it, likely Pieter Heijnsius, a wealthy master carpenter and stalwart Patriot from The Hague. Pieter’s daughter, Maria Heijnsius, was married to Isaac van Cleef, Wolff-Bekker’s publisher. As the publicist of Wolff-Bekker’s work, Van Cleef also commissioned the portrait print of Wolff-Bekker that served as the model for the portrait on the glass. Heijnsius and his son-in-law were good friends and both were members of the same Patriot society. Van Cleef was a central figure in Wolff-Bekker’s circle of enlightened admirers. The inscription on the glass also provides insight into Wolff-Bekker’s reputation. It is true that Wolff-Bekker was a supporter of the Patriot movement, but the latter part of the inscription necessitates a more nuanced interpretation of a toast made with this glass. Wolff-Bekker’s admirers were drawn by her literary talent as ‘Neerlands wonder’, but even more so by her opposition to the Calchas figures of her day: the hypocritical ministers set on deceiving and inciting the people. This reflects Wolff-Bekker’s reputation as a defender of virtue and combatant of hypocrites arising from her polemical writings published in the seventeen-seventies and later.

Medieval and Renaissance depictions of the episodes of Christ’s Passion often seem to invite the devout beholder to participate in the events portrayed. To explain how such an approach can be extended to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Netherlands, this essay shows how Gerbrand van den Eeckhout’s Last Supper invites the beholder to take the seat that Judas has left vacant. A comparison with other Last Supper scenes shows how effectively Van den Eeckhout’s composition invites viewers into the imaginary space and time represented in the painting.

The Rijksmuseum Bulletin is the quarterly, peer-reviewed journal presenting scholarly articles that contribute to historical and art-historical research into the Rijksmuseum collections to an international audience of curators, scholars, students, art professionals and enthusiasts.