Cast and painted white. Partially detailed on the reverse.

The white paint has peeled off in places. There is a crack in the left side. Several fragments of plaster have flaked off the plinth. The leg of the letter ‘R’ in one of Thorbecke’s first names has been blocked out, meaning that the initials now read as JP instead of JR (Johan Rudolf).

Sale Louis Royer (1793-1868), Amsterdam (Roos), 17 November 1868, no. 177, fl. 1.25, to Bierman;¹¹Copy RKD. …; donated by Jonkheer Barthold Willem Floris van Riemsdijk (1850-1942), to the museum, 16 December 1893

Object number: BK-B-69

Credit line: Gift of Jonkheer B.W.F. van Riemsdijk, Amsterdam

The work portrays the liberal statesman Johan Rudolf Thorbecke (1792-1872). He was the most influential drafter of the new constitution in 1848 and as such was the foremost founding father of Dutch parliamentary democracy. In the years that followed, Thorbecke was the Minister of the Interior, in three cabinets, comparable with the office of Prime Minister today. The plaster bust was made by Louis Royer (1793-1868), at the time the leading sculptor in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The large statues of Michiel de Ruyter, William the Silent, Rembrandt, Laurens Jansz Coster and Vondel are well-known works by Royer, as was the former national monument in Dam Square, Amsterdam (dismantled in April 1841). In addition, Royer was in demand as a portraitist of important contemporaries, including Pope Leo XII (BK-B-45) and King William I (BK-18755). The bust of Thorbecke is the last in a long series of portrait busts that the sculptor made - less than two years after its completion Royer died, on 5 June 1868.

Royer took the initiative for the portrait himself. He wrote to Thorbecke on 4 March 1866 saying the politician deserved a place in the panoply of important people in the history of the nation whom he had already saluted with a tribute in sculpture.²²Nijmegen, Catholic Documentation Centre, inv. no. 5434. Langendijk in G. van den Hout and E. Langendijk (eds.), Louis Royer 1793-1868: Een Vlaamse beeldhouwer in Amsterdam, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Amstelkring) 1994, p. 45. Thorbecke accepted, though he made it clear that he could spare no money for the bust.³³Nijmegen, Catholic Documentation Centre, inv. no. 5434. E. Langendijk, unpublished manuscript on Louis Royer, 2001, n.p. 27, in Artist File Louis Royer, RMA. He sent the sculptor a number of lithographs and photos of himself and several posing sessions took place in April. In letters to his wife, the already elderly statesman complained that Royer would not allow him to sit down, he was obliged to remain standing.⁴⁴The Hague, Algemeen Rijksarchief, archive J.R. Thorbecke. Langendijk in G. van den Hout and E. Langendijk (eds.), Louis Royer 1793-1868: Een Vlaamse beeldhouwer in Amsterdam, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Amstelkring) 1994, pp. 45-46. The initial design precipitated a difference of opinion concerning the garment in which the statesman was to be immortalized. In a letter of 17 May 1866 Thorbecke let Royer know he had a ‘great aversion’ (grooten weerzin) to the official robe in which the sculptor had depicted him.⁵⁵Nijmegen, Catholic Documentation Centre, inv. no. 5377. . E. Langendijk, unpublished manuscript on Louis Royer, 2001, n.p. 27, in Artist File Louis Royer, RMA. He would have preferred to be represented all’antica, with the neck uncovered and wearing a draped tunic. In the end Royer compromised by draping a loose cape over the subject’s shoulder, a formula he had previously used, for instance on the busts of King William I in The Hague (Royal Library) and Alberdingk Thijm in Ghent (Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature).⁶⁶G. van den Hout and E. Langendijk (eds.), Louis Royer 1793-1868: Een Vlaamse beeldhouwer in Amsterdam, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Amstelkring) 1994, pp. 6 and 69 (ills.).

Royer finished Thorbecke’s bust in September 1866. He sent a cast to his subject in The Hague who wrote a letter to the artist on 4 October informing him that he was very pleased with the result.⁷⁷Nijmegen, Catholic Documentation Centre, inv. no. 5377. Langendijk in G. van den Hout and E. Langendijk (eds.), Louis Royer 1793-1868: Een Vlaamse beeldhouwer in Amsterdam, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Amstelkring) 1994, p. 46. However, the textural expression and the rendering of Thorbecke’s hair are, by Royer’s standards, very rudimentary and the handling of the folds simple but this should probably be seen in the context of his advanced age and declining health.

We do not know for what purpose Royer intended the actual bust, or if it was in fact executed in a durable medium. In all events, nothing came of a public showing during his lifetime. The present original plaster bust, together with the concomitant casting moulds and three other versions, probably also in plaster, were still in the sculptor’s workshop when he died on 5 June 1868.⁸⁸Sale Louis Royer (1793-1868), Amsterdam (Roos), 17 November 1868, nos. 177, 178 and 278/e (casting moulds). The original plaster model was purchased at the sale of Royer’s artistic effects by a certain Bierman. On 12 December 1893 Jonkheer Barthold Willem Floris van Riemsdijk, the deputy director of the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, donated the work to the Rijksmuseum, which was housed in the same building, probably for the portraits gallery.⁹⁹Het Nieuws van den Dag, 18 December 1893. In the early twentieth century it was possible to order plaster casts of the bust.¹⁰¹⁰A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1915, no. 1648. According to Van Daalen a few bronze replicas also exist.¹¹¹¹P.K. van Daalen, Nederlandse beeldhouwers in de negentiende eeuw, The Hague 1957, p. 131.

Shortly after Thorbecke’s death in 1872 an initiative was started to place a public monument in The Hague in the statesman’s memory. When the municipal council of The Hague objected on political grounds, it was decided to erect it in Amsterdam. The statue, a head-to-toe portrayal after a design by Ferdinand Leenhoff (1841-1914), was unveiled on 18 May 1876 in the square which was subsequently named after Thorbecke. A portrait study of the head, which is very reminiscent of Royer’s interpretation, can be found in the Rijksmuseum, on loan from the city of Amsterdam (NG-C-1999-4).

Bieke van der Mark, 2026

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 450, with earlier literature; G. van den Hout and E. Langendijk (eds.), Louis Royer 1793-1868: Een Vlaamse beeldhouwer in Amsterdam, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Amstelkring) 1994, pp. 45-46; J. Reynaerts (ed.), 1800-1900, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2017, p. 21

B. van der Mark, 2026, 'Louis Royer, Bust of Johan Rudolf Thorbecke (1792-1872), Amsterdam, 1866', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035882