Work The regents of the Walen Orphanage (1641-1642) was until recently registered as a work of an unknown maker, after it had previously been listed for a long time as a Hendrick van Someren (1615-1685).
Celine Oldenhage, former trainee at the Waalse Kerk, made the discovery. After she had written her cultural history thesis about the tombstone floor of the Waalse Kerk, she was asked by the board of the church to make an inventory of the extensive movable heritage. This included a large collection of paintings by directors from earlier times of the foundations.
Commissioned
Oldenhage suggested with the help of the newspaper portal Delpher a source corpus of some 50,000 articles. In it she came across a message from 1932 about The regents of the Walen Orphanagea work commissioned by the Walloon Church in the 17th century.
The message described how restorer PN Bakker had found Van der Helst’s signature in the lower right corner of the canvas covered by the frame. The find led to a media frenzy at the time, but less than a year later the painting was again attributed to Hendrick van Someren.
After cleaning
Oldenhage presented her discovery to Van der Helst expert Judith van Gent and Norbert Middelkoop, a specialist in 17th-century group portraits from the Amsterdam Museum, who had already suggested in 2021 on stylistic grounds that the regent’s painting might represent a ‘young Van der Helst’. can be.
The painting was framed, but the signature did not immediately appear. After cleaning the bottom right corner, fragments of the signature were still visible, and the Amsterdam Museum’s specialists concluded that it is most likely a Van der Helst, whose work hangs in the Rijksmuseum, among others.
However, the painting is in poor condition and needs to be restored. The Waalse Kerk and the Amsterdam Museum, which has had the painting on loan since 2021, are looking for financing. It will therefore take some time before the public can see the work.
