Portrait of Emma Jane Hodges (1789-1868)

Emma Jane Hodges was about 20 when her father painted her, around 1810. He sat her outdoors, half-length, in front of a landscape under a dark and cloudy sky, the way English portraitists liked to pose their sitters. The Hodges family came from England, and the Rijksmuseum sees this open-air setting as an English touch in a portrait painted in Amsterdam. The heavy clouds also do a practical job. Against them her white collar stands out and draws the eye straight to her face. Emma Jane looked after her father in his later years. When she died in 1868, she left this portrait to the museum together with his self-portrait.