Lot 33: LOUISE HOLLANDINE, PRINCESS PALATINE

LOUISE HOLLANDINE, PRINCESS PALATINE 1622-1709 SELF-PORTRAIT, HOLDING A PAINT BRUSH oil on panel 74.5 by 59 cm.; 29 1/4 by 23 1/4 in.

London, The National Portrait Gallery, The Winter Queen; Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia and her family, 1963, no 62

A. van Rohr, '"Peint par Madame l'Abbesse" Louise Hollandine Princessin von der Pfalz (1622-1709)', Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte, XXVIII, 1989, p. 155, no. 7, fig. 3;
J.R. Judson and R.E.O. Ekkart, Gerrit von Honthorst, 1999, p. 274

By family descent until sold London, Phillips, 18 December 1984, lot 5 (bt. for £4,000 as attributed to Honthorst).

The sitter was the seventh child and second daughter of Frederick Elector Palatine and his wife Elizabeth. She was born in The Hague, shortly after her parents' arrival in the Netherlands following Frederick's defeat in Bohemia in 1620. She was christened Louise after her paternal grandfather and Hollandine as a tribute to the States of Holland, her godfathers, and the country of her birth. She was a talented artist who studied with Honthorst and painted a number of members of her family. In December 1657 she left her home in disguise and became a Catholic nun. In 1664 she became Abbess of the convent of Maubuisson, and continued to live there until her death at the age of eighty-eight. This elegant self-portrait dates from c. 1650. According to the catalogue for the Winter Queen exhibition of 1963 it is the prime version and appears to have been reduced in size from an original three-quarter length composition.