Portrait of Margaretha Godin (d. 1694), wife of the artist

Painted around 1700 and held by the Rijksmuseum, this portrait by Caspar Netscher depicts Margaretha Godin, his wife — one of the rare self-directed portrait commissions in his oeuvre. Netscher married Margaretha Godin in The Hague and she appears to have been the subject of several portraits from his hand. A painter's wife portrait occupies a distinctive place in the genre: it combines the personal intimacy of a domestic image with the professional display of technical mastery appropriate to an artist who used his family as living advertisement for his skills. The portrait's date at the very end of the seventeenth century places it among the last works of Netscher's career, when his style had attained its maximum refinement and his reputation in The Hague was at its peak. The Rijksmuseum holds it as part of a comprehensive representation of Netscher's portraiture.

Canvas, oil, with the polished surface and meticulous detail of Netscher's mature style. The sitter is shown in the fashionable late seventeenth-century French-influenced dress that characterises his Hague portraits. Flesh tones are built with characteristic warmth and translucency. The treatment of silk demonstrates the controlled glazing technique that made his female portraits so admired.