Portrait of Alida Christina Assink

In the early 1830s women's sleeves reached their widest, and this portrait of 1833 shows the fashion at full stretch. Alida Christina Assink, 23 years old, wears sleeves puffed out wide under a lace collar that spreads across her shoulders, a gold chain and a large buckle at a tightly drawn waist. Her hair is pinned into a high looped knot with clusters of curls at the temples, a style known as the Apollo knot and popular around 1830. A straw bonnet with a green ribbon hangs on the chair behind her, and an open book rests in her hand while a hunting dog looks up at her. Jan Adam Kruseman signed and dated the canvas, which is more than two metres high. It belongs to the City of Amsterdam and hangs on loan in the Rijksmuseum, in the room for Romanticism in the Netherlands.