This is one of a pair of portraits of a husband and wife, one of the richest couples in the Netherlands. Jacob Trip, who made much of his money as an arms dealer, had been married to Margaretha de Geer for nearly 60 years. The paintings, both in the National Gallery, were made to hang together, almost certainly in one of the grand reception rooms of a palatial new residence – the Trippenhuis – which was being built in Amsterdam for their sons.
Rembrandt creates a fascinating contrast between the couple. Their poses are asymmetrical – Margaretha meets our gaze head on, Jacob sits askew, his mind apparently elsewhere – and he uses different painting techniques. Jacob is rendered using swift, confident brushstrokes, while Margaretha’s skin and ruff are worked with great intensity and attention to detail.
Jacob died in 1661, around the time the painting was made. Perhaps Rembrandt was contrasting the fading presence of a dying man with the energy of his wife, who had another ten years to live.
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Neil MacLaren, revised and expanded by Christopher Brown, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School: 1600–1900’, London 1991; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters: In Which is Included a Short Biographical Notice of the Artists, with a Copious Description of Their Principal Pictures […], vol. 2, London 1830
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
This English replica frame was made in 2014. The box frame is covered with ebonised pearwood mouldings. The top section begins with a narrow edge roll and a flat, followed by a large hollow and another edge roll and flat. This leads to a raised ogee with an edge roll and a flat sight moulding.
This frame was made at the same time as the replica frame crafted for Rembrandt’s Portrait of Margaretha de Geer, Wife of Jacob Trip. Both reproductions were inspired by a seventeenth-century Dutch frame on the portrait of Agatha van Loon by Nicolaes Maes (Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam).
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
In seventeenth-century Holland, it was common for married couples to be depicted separately in paintings designed to be hung as a pair, with the woman’s portrait invariably hung to the right. This placed the wife to her husband’s left – or, as it was regarded at the time, his inferior side: marriage was a partnership steered by the man.
These portraits are particularly large examples, reflecting the status of the couple, Jacob Trip and Margaretha de Geer – who belonged to one of the richest families in Holland. They were probably commissioned by two of the Trips‘ sons, to be hung in a palatial residence which they were building in Amsterdam.
The poses are unusual. Normally we’d expect each sitter to be half turned towards the other. But Margaretha faces the viewer directly. She may be sitting on her husband’s inferior side, but Rembrandt seems to imply that she is the more active and engaged of the two.
