Mattheus Wijtmans

In the art historical literature, one cannot find a lot of accurate information about the birth of Mattheus. He was supposedly born somewhere around 1645 and his place of birth was certainly Gorcum. Alas, both pieces of data are completely false. Mattheus was baptised a Roman Catholic on 23 October in 1638, in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. His father named him after his own father, who was a maker of soap in that city. Mattheus’ father was called Dirk or Theodorus. In 1636, he married Ida van den Bosch in Gorcum, where she was living at that time. Ida was the daughter of a tradesman in broadcloth and ‘mopstenen’, a particular type of bricks that were used for making walls and roads. It was probably because Mattheus’ parents got married in Gorcum that this was also mistakenly seen as his place of birth. However, it was customary to get married in the bride’s residence and after the wedding, we see that the bride joined her new husband in Den Bosch. It wasn’t until 1640 that the family moved to Gorcum. Mattheus was then about 18 months old. In Gorcum, they lived at different addresses, including Arkelstraat 8 (which is now the place of the hairdressers Brainwash) and Gasthuisstraat 9 (where the clothing store Steps is now located). Mattheus’ father was a soap trader (just like his father before him), but also dealt in vegetable oil, woad-ashes (for paint), cheese and sheep. It wasn’t a particularly wealthy household. On a regular basis, creditors went to court, including quite a few innkeepers. But also a baker, to whom they owed the huge amount of ƒ118 for bread. In 1664, Dirk Wijtmans paid this debt using two paintings that might have been made by his fifteen-year-old son Mattheus. The latter had become an apprentice of Hendrik Verschuring. He was also a student at a Latin school in Venray. Apparently, the Latin school in Gorcum was not good enough, because it was heavily influenced by Protestantism. For the catholic branch of the Wijtmans family, this just wasn’t an option. Mattheus’ older sister even became a nun in the order of Saint Franciscus. And his oldest son became a pastor in the Old Catholic church.

Mattheus Wijtmans came from a family with at least one other artistic descendant, but he was part of the protestant branch. One of his father’s uncles was called Nicolaas Wijtmans. We mainly know him as the engraver of a view of Gorcum and a map of this city from 1600. In addition, he made a picture for a lottery of a church in Rotterdam, the glass in the Sint-Jan in Gouda called ‘Jesus and the adulterous woman’, a glass in the church of Haastrecht (commissioned by the city of Rotterdam), an engraving on a silver cup, and many tiles, in particular also for Prince Maurits’ yacht. He lived in Den Bosch and Rotterdam, but we may assume that Mattheus was able to see the engravings at home in Gorcum. And if not, Nicolaas’ son Jacob would have had the pictures at home and he lived at Appeldijk 3.

In 1665 Mattheus left for Utrecht, then 26 years old. That same year, the painter Jan van Dalen from Gorcum finished two portraits on which we can probably see the earlier mentioned Jacob and his wife. For several years now, we have the Mattheus Wijtmansstraat in Lingewijk-Noord. Now no one will ever say again, ‘Mattheus who?’

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