Caspar Netscher Heidelberg (?) 1639 - 1684 The Hague

By descent in the Huygens family to Susanna Louisa Huygens (died 1785);
Thence by descent to her great-nephew J.P. Hoeufft (died 1821), whose label is affixed to the reverse;
Bought in The Hague between 1815 and 1827, probably from J.P. Hoeufft or his heirs, by J.G.J. Camberlyn;
Presumably by inheritance to H. Camberlyn d'Amougies, Pepinghen, near Brussels;
By inheritance to J. Camberlyn;
His sale, Amsterdam, Fred. Muller, 13 July 1926, lot 629 (reproduced in the satalogue), with pendant, for 5,200 Florins to "van Groningen op Hoevelaken" (thus probably for C.J.K. van Aelst, Hoevelaken);
C.J.K. van Aelst, Hoevelaken, by 1939;
With Hans Cramer, The Hague, 1965-6, from whom bought by the present owner.

Hymans, 1886, p. 434 ("[elle] a la délicatesse d'un Metzu, avec tout le sentiment pittoresque d'un de Keyser");
E.W. Moes, `Een verzameling familieportretten der Huygensen in 1785', in Oud Holland, vol. 14, 1896, p. 182, as signed and dated C. Netscher 1690 and attributed to Constantijn Netscher;
J.W. von Moltke, Dutch and Flemish Old Masters in the collection of Dr. C.J.K. Van Aelst, Huis te Hoevelaken, Holland, 1939, p. 242, reproduced plate LVIII;
H.E. van Gelder, Ikonographie van Constantijn Huygens en de zijnen, The Hague 1957, p. 54, no. 4, reproduced fig. 55;
M.E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-century Dutch Painting, Doornspijk 2002, pp. 230-231, no. 88, reproduced fig. 88, (pp. 99, 216, under no. 66), as present whereabouts unknown. 

The sitter is Suzanna Doublet-Huygens, Vrouwe van St. Annaland (1637-1725).  She was the fifth and last child of Constantijn Huygens and Suzanna van Baerle, and their only daughter.  In 1660 she married her cousin Philips III Doublet, Heer van St. Anneland and Moggershil (1633-1707) who like his father and his father-in-law, held high office in the United Provinces, and was a patron of the arts, building the first French-style garden in the Netherlands at his estate at Clingendael, and was influential in the spread of French taste in The Netherlands.  He also sat to Netscher in a picture usually considered a pendant to the present picture, now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (inv. 794; see Wieseman under Literature, pp. 215-6, no. 66, reproduced fig. 66).  Both portraits remained together until sold separately by Hans Cramer.  Although they are on panels of identical size, they may not originally have been pendants, however, since a pair of portraits of the couple by Netscher is recorded in documents of 1666 and 1667; one of these may be the Braunschweig picture, as Wieseman suggests, dating it circa 1667.  Alternatively, these documents may refer to other, lost portraits, and the present picture and the one in Braunschweig may have been conceived as pendants, in which case the latter must date from 1669 not 1667.  Whatever the truth of their origins may be, it is clear that they were considered as pendants by subsequent generations of the Huygens family, and thereafter.

Suzanna Huygens grew up in a milieu that was both highly cultured and politically powerful.  Her father was secretary to the Stadholders Frederik Hendrik, Willem II and Willem III, and from 1651 Raadpensionaris (Councillor) and Rekenmeester (Comptroller) to the House of Orange.  He was a musician and a poet, and was enormously influential in the cultural life of The Netherlands, advising Frederik Hendrik on matters of art and architecture: early in his life he was the first to recognise the genius of the young Rembrandt (whose portrait of Huygens usually hangs in the Dulwich Picture Gallery), and was his first champion; later he was the driving force behind the establishment of the taste for the classical in the arts, and in particular in architecture, in the United Provinces.  He also sat to Netscher at about the same time as the present portrait and again a year or two later; so did his son Christiaan (with whom Phillips Doublet had made a proto-Grand tour in 1655), and his sister-in-law, Philips' mother.  In all, Netscher painted six portraits of members of the Huygens family between 1667 and 1672, evidence that by the late 1660s he was sufficiently highly regarded to capture the attention of the most influential dynasty of the Dutch patriciate.