Portrait of a Woman in Black

Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck (Dutch, about 1606/09–1662)

1643

Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas

Dimensions80.4 x 65.1 cm (31 5/8 x 25 5/8 in.)

Credit LineRobert Dawson Evans Collection

Accession number17.3271

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsPaintings

Collections

Europe

InscriptionsLower left: A Etatis 37: J Verspronck an 1643 (Vers in monogram)

ProvenanceBy 1870, Adriaan van der Willigen (b. 1810 - d. 1876), Harlem [see note 1]; April 20, 1874, Van der Willigen sale, A. G. de Visser, The Hague, lot 101. 1875, Prince Paul Galitzin, Paris; March 10, 1875, Galitzin sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, lot 64, sold for 1060 fr. 1881, John W. Wilson, Paris; March 14, 1881, Wilson sale, at his residence, Paris, lot 119, sold to Charles Sedelmeyer (dealer), Paris for fr. 1,100. Rodolphe Kann (b. 1845 - d. 1905), Paris [see note 2]; 1907, sold by the heirs of Rodolphe Kann to Duveen Brothers, Paris. Blakeslee Galleries, New York; sold by Blakeslee to Maria Antoinette Hunt (Mrs. Robert Dawson) Evans (b. 1845 - d. 1917), Boston; 1917, bequest of Mrs. Robert Dawson Evans to the MFA. (Accession Date: November 1, 1917)

NOTES:
[1] See A. van der Willigen, Les Artistes de Harlem (Harlem and The Hague, 1870), p. 307. This painting and its pendant, MFA accession no. 17.3270, have an identical provenance and were included in the same lot in the 1874 sale.

[2] Wilhelm von Bode, Catalogue of the Rodolphe Kann Collection (Paris, 1907), cat. no. 90. When and how the portraits came into his possession is not known, however, as they are not mentioned in earlier publications of the Kann collection.