portrait-info.txt

Portrait Information : October 1999 

Good news!
Last monday we posted the letter to the Iconographich Bureau at The Hague 
and guess what: we already got their reply today (wednesday)!
The conservator, and we quote, "was very pleased and surprised by the colour-
copies of the pastel-portraits" because he recognized the hand of the touring 
portrait-painter Rienk Jelgerhuis (1729-1806).
Considering clothing and hair-dress, he could tell  that the portraits are made
during the last quarter of the 18th century.
So we now  a s s u m e, and so does the conservator, that the eldest man is
Pieter Olifiers (our number V-2), the younger one Petrus Antonius/Pieter
Antony (VI-3) and the lady Joanna Margaretha Olifiers-Olifiers (Pieter Antony's
wife).
The bureau sent us a copy of an article on Rienk Jelgerhuis with details on his
life and work. It seems that he travelled around the country to portrait the
well-to-do middle-class people. He often added a table to his portraits with one
or more objects on it that were symbolic for the hobby or profession of his models
(medicine-boxes/doctors?!).
We furthermore learned that Jelgerhuis always signed his portraits, 
on the right bottom, by pencil, adding day-month and year. In the left corner
he usually mentioned a number (he painted nearly 8000 portraits, a hundred of
which are known and located, about 40 of them in Dutch musea).
The conservator tells us that the signature is indeed very hard to see, even with
a special lamp, but he would be very obliged if you would try again . . .
He also would like to receive, if possible, an original photograph of the portraits.
If you and/or your father would like to receive a full translation of the article on
Jelgerhuis, please let us know. Will e-mail you anyhow his portrait next weekend!


Just a small note to let you know that Rienk Jelgerhuis used to date his
    portraits as follows:
     
    suppose he made one on august 15, 1785 his date would read as follows:
     
     
                                                   15
                                          17     -----    85
                                                    8