#limner

Creativity and artistic talent in the birth chart don't depend on just one factor, but rather on the combination of planets, signs, and aspects that enhance sensitivity, imagination, inspiration, and aesthetic expression. Below are the main placements often found in people with strong artistic potential:

🎨 Venus in Prominent Positions

Venus is the planet of beauty, art, harmony, and sensual pleasure. When it’s strong or well-aspected, especially in sensitive or artistic signs like:

Venus in Pisces: innate love for the arts, aesthetic sensitivity, and a connection to the symbolic world.

Venus in Taurus or Libra (its rulership signs): refined aesthetic sense, elegance, talent for music, fashion, decoration, visual arts, or dance.

Aspects with Neptune or the Moon: enhance emotional and artistic expression.

🎭 Strong or Well-Aspected Neptune

Neptune rules inspiration, imagination, fantasy, and transcendence. It governs art that touches the soul and goes beyond logic—like music, poetry, film, painting, and spirituality.

Neptune in aspect to the Sun, Moon, or Venus: indicates artistic sensitivity and a vocation for visual arts, music, theater, or photography.

Neptune in the 1st, 5th, or 10th house: suggests art as part of one’s identity, life purpose, or career.

🌙 Moon in Sensitive or Creative Signs

The Moon rules emotions and the subconscious. Its position shows how creativity is experienced internally.

Moon in Cancer, Pisces, or Taurus: rich imagination and the ability to create with emotion and beauty.

Aspects with Neptune or Venus: reinforce artistic sensitivity and empathy.

🌞 Sun or Ascendant in Creative Signs

Leo: ruled by the Sun, associated with self-expression, performance, and artistic leadership.

Pisces: naturally connected to inspiration, art, and spirituality.

Libra: refined and aesthetic, with a gift for design, beauty, and relationships.

Taurus and Cancer: artistic expression tied to nature, beauty, and emotion.

🪐 5th and 12th Houses

5th House: the house of creativity, personal expression, arts, and hobbies. Planets here (especially the Sun, Venus, or Neptune) show strong creative drive.

12th House: connected to the unconscious, imagination, and symbolism. Artists with emotional depth and intuitive talent often have this house active.

✨ Key Aspects

Venus conjunct/trine Neptune: natural charm and elevated artistic sense.

Sun or Moon with Neptune: rich imagination and artistic calling.

Mercury with Neptune: talent for poetic writing, storytelling, screenwriting, or music.

Sun or Venus with Uranus: originality and a unique, inventive artistic style.

Having Neptune in the 10th house is a strong indication that you might work with art. Early in life, it can be hard to decide what you want to do, but this placement is very common among artists. Walt Disney was one of them.

💡 Final Thoughts

An artistic chart often combines emotional sensitivity (Moon, Neptune) with expressiveness (Sun, 5th House, Leo) and a deep love for beauty (Venus). The person may not always work with art professionally, but these placements indicate creative potential that can be expressed through embroidery, illustration, dance, theater, fashion, music, writing, or even therapeutic arts.

Artist and Sticker got married last week, tho my schedule is pretty busy so I didn't had much time to do something more than this doodle qwq

The front and inside of the Lyte Jewel made in 1566, showing King James VI and I of Scotland and England. It was painted by Nicholas Hilliard and is called the Lyte Jewel because it was given by the king to Thomas Lyte in 1610. Lyte is the creator of the king’s pedigree, tracing it back to the founders of British Isles to help legitimize the kings rule. 

It has been debated whether or not Hilliard produced all the work around the painting or even any of it.  He had some training in goldsmithing and enameling but to what extent is unclear.  He was mostly a limner, someone who does painting and portraits but he may have had some other training.  

The piece was acquired by the British Museum in 1898 after it had passed hands many times through the Lyte family.  

“ Curator's Description:

Pendant jewel; gold; oval; set with twenty-five square table diamonds and four rose diamonds; contains miniature portrait of James I as a young man; cover in open-work with diamonds on outside and enamel within; frame of square diamonds connected by slender enamelled band; back is white enamel plate with fine gold lines and ruby enamel; edge enamelled alternately ruby and sapphire blue; inscribed.”

Attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck American, 1695–1746 Wilhelmina Ritzema 1744–1746 Oil on linen 81.3 x 63.5 cm New-York Historical Society Museum and Library www.nyhistory.org/exhibit/wilhelmina-ritzema

We’re starting the week with one more portrait attributed to eighteenth-century American limner Gerardus Duyckinck. For more info about him and about the folk art tradition of limning, plus some more fun dogs, check out the previous Museum Dogs posts: http://museumdogs.tumblr.com/tagged/limner.

Wilhelmina Ritzema was the daughter of a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church, Johannes Ritzema (1704–1794). He was born in Friesland, Holland. His wife was Hilltje Dyckstra (1708–1793), and they had three children, Rudolphus (who would go on to be a hero for the American cause in the Revolutionary War), Alida, and Maria Wilhelmina. Johannes  emigrated to New York City in 1744, where he had been called to become the domine of the Dutch Reformed Church. (The rest of the family must have followed a year or so later—various sources cite Wilhelmina as having been born in Holland in 1745.) Johannes was also one of the original trustees of King’s College, now Columbia University. After retiring from his church pastorship, he lived in Kinderhook, and he died there in 1794.[1] 

Wilhelmina was born in Holland in 1745. In 1771, she married Thomas Andrew Hoog, and they had four children, Euphemia, John, William, and Margaret. After Thomas Hoog died, Wilhelmina married a second time, to David van Schaack of Kinderhook. She outlived him, too, and died in 1813. Dutch-American families in eighteenth-century New York retained a very strong Dutch identity; one of the ways in which they kept up with what was going on in the homeland, especially in religious matters, was through books written in Dutch and printed in the Netherlands. Johannes Ritzema owned such books, as did Wilhelmina. A copy of a massive book about Amsterdam, Beschryvinge van Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Wolfgang, Waasberge, Boom, van Someren en Goethals, 1693), now in the Harvard’s Houghton Library, bears Johannes Ritzema’s signature on the flyleaf; as well as the signature of his grandson by Wilhelmina, John R. Hoog; a note stating that Wilhelmina later gave the book to her nephew David Ritzema Bogert; and annotations by other family members throughout the book. And the Senate House Museum in Kingston, New York, has a copy of De godsdienstige christen, in zyn gedrag en wandel (Amsterdam: Jacob Borstius, 1725) inscribed by “Maria Wilhelmina van Schaack, Kinderhook, 1805."[2]

Gerardus Duyckinck was very much a part of the Dutch community in America. He was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York City, and he was one of the signatories of the report of new pastor Johannes Ritzema’s arrival that was sent back to Amsterdam. Ritzema engaged Duyckinck to paint a portrait of his infant daughter Wilhelmina soon after the family settled in New York.[3]

The portrait of Wilhelmina Ritzema does not appear to be based on any particular mezzotint print of an English painting, as most of Duyckinck’s (and other American limners’) portraits were. Wilhelmina was just a baby when the portrait was painted, hence the padded bumper hat she is wearing (at the time, children were discouraged from crawling in favor of walking, and they were thus appropriately padded against falling), but Duyckinck gave her the expression and pose of an adult. Indeed, children were treated a little adults, and it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that the modern concept of childhood really came about. The cookie Wilhelmina holds is very much associated with Dutch culture—quite appropriate for the daughter of a newly-arrived émigré and pillar of the Dutch community in New York.[4]

Duyckinck might have copied the peacock in the painting from an English mezzotint of a French painting (http://tinyurl.com/lzgwk3o). In Christian symbolism, the peacock is associated with incorruptibility (the flesh of the peacock was thought to never rot), resurrection (Medieval traditions asserted that after a peacock sheds his feathers, the new one grow in more brilliant), and the all-seeing watchfulness of God (from the "eyes" in the bird's tail feathers). The peacock also has associations with nobility, as Europe, the bird was kept and eaten only by the upper classes. In the portrait, the peacock is perched on the balustrade in the background, but , because of some unfortunate composition on Duyckinck’s part, kind of appears to be standing on the cookie in Wilhelmina’s outstretched hand. Weird, that.

Spaniels of all sizes had been popular as pets (small) and hunting dogs (large) in Europe for centuries, and they appear very frequently in portraiture (see, for example, http://museumdogs.tumblr.com/tagged/spaniel.) And dogs in general are a common feature in European and early American portraits of  children. The leggy spaniel in the Ritzema portrait appears to be of Duyckinck’s own invention—however, readers, please write in if you can identify this dog from another painting.

As any dog would be, the spaniel is VERY interested in the cookie Wilhelmina is brandishing. His eyes are fixed on it, and his tongue is hanging out in anticipation of a treat. THERE IS FOOD! PLEASE MAY I HAVE SOME OF THAT FOOD I NEED TO BE EATING THAT COOKIE! PLEEEEEEEEASE!!! The dog does have the right idea, hanging around a small child. They can be counted on to drop lots of good food crumbs. In fact, that cookie probably didn’t remain in Wilhelmina’s hand for long; the dog probably snatched it away at the first opportunity. I AM SORRY NOT SORRY, HUMAN—ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND TREATS!

  Notes ________________________________ 

1. The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Vol. 7 (New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1876), p. 192; (“A Historical Sketch of Rutgers University: Section 1,” Rutgers University Libraries, http://tinyurl.com/oaqhomb, accessed January 19, 2015; Names of Persons for whom Marriage Licences were Issued by the Secretary of the Province of New York, previous to 1784 (Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, 1860), p. 189; William Hall, "Colonel Rudolphus Ritzema," Magazine of American History: With Notes and Queries, Volume 2 (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1878), p. 163.

2. Houghton Library Blog, “From Amsterdam to New Amsterdam to Cambridge,” July 11, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/mz9gwhk, accessed January 19, 2015; Jaap Jacobs, "'It has pleased the Lord that we must learn English”: Dutch New York after 1664," in Deborah L. Krohn and Peter N. Miller, eds., Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 55–56; p. 64, note.

3. Roderic H. Blackburn and Nancy A. Kelley, eds., New World Dutch Studies: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609–1776, 1986 symposium proceedings (Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1897), p. 125.

Attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck I American, 1695–1746

Pierre Van Cortlandt c. 1731 Oil on linen 144.8 x 105.5 cm Brooklyn Museum www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/627/Pierre_Van_Cortlandt#

De Peyster Boy, with a Dog c. 1730–1735 Oil on canvas 127.6 x 104.1 cm New York Historical Society www.nyhistory.org/exhibit/de-peyster-boy-dog

John Smith (British, 1652–1743), after Godfrey Kneller (British, 1646–1723)

Richard Lord Clifford and Lady Jane his Sister 1701 Mezzotint 41.1 x  25.3 cm British Museum http://tinyurl.com/mfp57xs

His Highness the Duke of Glocester 1691 Mezzotint 40.5 x 25.2 cm British Museum http://tinyurl.com/kpx3wz4

Today, Museum Dogs is taking a look at two more portraits attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck, a third-generation limner who worked in New York City and surrounding environs in the eighteenth century. (For more of his paintings and some info about him, check out http://museumdogs.tumblr.com/tagged/Duyckinck.)   Limners were largely anonymous, self-taught, itinerant artists who worked outside the realm of academic art. Often having training and experience in decorative and sign painting, they specialized in portraits and, sometimes, religious scenes. Their work, which usually falls into the category of folk or “naïve” art, is characterized by flat, awkward figures and off-kilter perspective. Even so, such paintings display a unique vision that is sometimes lost in academic, high art. Varying degrees of skill are evident among limners’ paintings; Gerardus Duyckinck is one of the more accomplished artists of the genre. (Compare and contrast some limners’ works—and the dogs therein!—featured on Museum Dogs recently: http://museumdogs.tumblr.com/tagged/limner.)   

Eighteenth-century American limners often copied poses and elements from mezzotint prints of European paintings. A longtime staple feature of European portraiture was dogs, and thus dogs found their way into early American paintings. Children in particular were often depicted with dogs and other animals like deer, lambs, and birds. Duyckinck’s portraits of Pierre van Cortlandt and Abraham de Peyster are excellent examples of the relationship between European paintings (via widely-circulated mezzotints) and their American counterparts, as well as the prevalence of excellent dogs in both artistic realms.

The connection between Pierre van Cortlandt and Abraham de Peyster goes beyond their sharing a portraitist; indeed, the two were family. There was lots of intermarriage and, by today’s standards, inbreeding among the de Peysters and van Cortlands—and indeed, all the wealthy families of New York in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (and after). That, however, made for all sorts of interesting connections between everyone. Abraham de Peyster and Pierre van Cortlandt were first cousins—Abe’s father and Pierre’s mother were brother and sister. Abe and Pierre also shared a set of great-grandparents. (Take a look at a family tree at http://tinyurl.com/kog95ry. One can’t always believe what one reads on the Internet, where the genealogical information came from, but I think/hope I got it right.)

Pierre van Cortlandt (1721–1814) was born into one of the most wealthy and powerful families in Colonial New York. His grandfathers, Stephanus van Cortlandt and Abraham de Peyster, had both served as Mayor of New York. Pierre himself went on to a number of governmental offices, including Vice President of the 4th New York Provincial Congress (the New York State Constitutional Convention), Senator in the New York state assembly, and Lieutenant Governor of New York, a position he held, through reelection five times, from 1778 until 1795. He had inherited lands and estates in Westchester County, where he built a number of houses. Van Cortlandt Manor (open to visitors; http://tinyurl.com/lxgzuvz), Oldstone (now used as an event location; www.monteverdeatoldstone.com), and Van Cortlandt Upper Manor House (now a nursing home; http://cortlandthealthcare.com/?page_id=212) still stand today. Also, three towns and a county in New York bearing the name of Cortland(t) are named after Pierre.[1]

Duyckinck’s likeness of the young van Cortlandt must have been pretty accurate, for it bears a strong resemblance to a portrait of him as an old man:

(Alas, I can’t find any information about the painting other than that the image file comes from a page on someone’s personal genealogy website, http://tinyurl.com/mfcotez. Take it for what you will.) 

Abraham de Peyster (1723–1734) was the grandson of Abraham de Peyster (1657–1728), a native New Yorker (or, rather, New Amsterdamer) from a wealthy merchant family. The elder Abraham was a big wheel in the city and the colony, serving in many governmental roles: alderman, Chief Justice, President of the King's Council, and Treasurer of New York and New Jersey. His most notable position, however, was as Mayor of New York City from 1691 to 1694. (The statue of de Peyster that had stood in various parts of New York City since 1896 now resides in Thomas Paine Park, not too far from City Hall.) One of Abraham's sons, Abraham, Jr., served as Treasurer of the Province from 1721 to 1767. Abraham, Jr., married Margaret van Cortlandt, daughter of another mayor of New York, Jacobus van Cortlandt. Abraham, Jr., and Margaret had eleven children, of which the Abraham in the portrait by Duyckinck was one. He was born in 1723, but, like a number of his siblings, Abraham died young at age 11 in 1734. Incidentally, one of Abraham’s first cousins on his mother’s side was John Jay, the patriot and first Chief Justice of the Unites States Supreme Court.[2]

The portrait of young Abraham de Peyster (like the one of Jacomina Winkler (featured on Museum Dogs on Monday: http://t.co/hNewU9lb2E), was probably painted posthumously. Portraits of two other de Peyster siblings, commissioned at the same time as the one of Abraham, are also attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck: De Peyster Boy, with a Deer (possibly Jacobus, also known as James, de Peyster; www.nyhistory.org/exhibit/de-peyster-boy-deer) and De Peyster Girl, with a Lamb (either Catharine or Margareta de Peyster; www.nyhistory.org/exhibit/de-peyster-girl-lamb).[3]

. . .

Pierre van Cortland and Abraham de Peyster are connected not only by family, but also by their portraits, for Duyckinck based elements of both paintings on an English mezzotint, Richard Lord Clifford and Lady Jane his Sister (http://tinyurl.com/mfp57xs), made by the printer John Smith in 1701 and based on a painting by Godfrey Kneller. De Peyster’s pose and drapery are identical to those in the mezzotint, as are the fabric hanging on the right and the fountain, balustrade, and landscape in the left background. In the van Cortlandt painting, the dog is taken directly from the print, curled tail and all. The rest of the van Cortlandt painting—pose, background, etc.—is taken from another, dogless, mezzotint, His Highness the Duke of Glocester (http://tinyurl.com/kpx3wz4), also by John Smith after a painting by Godfrey Kneller. The de Peyster dog might be based on an animal from some other print or he might be purely Duyckinck’s invention.

In both paintings, the dogs symbolize loyalty and serve to underscore the boys’ future roles as lords and masters (something that poor Abraham did not live to experience). The van Cortlandt dog is a very handsome black greyhound sporting a gold collar. She gazes out at the landscape in the background with a thoughtful, intense expression (more more visible in the mezzotint). Something of interest is out there! A squirrel or bird, perhaps. NOW THAT IS FASCINATING. SHALL I CHASE IT? I AM A WOLF! I AM A STEALTHY AND WISE HUNTER! AND I SHALL CONTEMPLATE THE SITUATION UNTIL I DISCERN THE PROPER MOMENT TO STRIKE. UNLESS MY PERSON RELOCATES TO THE SOFA, IN WHICH CASE I WILL GO HAVE A SNOOZE INSTEAD. The de Peyster dog is a leggy red and white spaniel with a rather unspaniel-like tail. He looks up at the boy with what is probably supposed to be admiration but what looks (to me) more like slightly confused expectation. HEY PERSON DO YOU HAVE A TREAT IN YOUR HAND WHY IS YOUR HAND OUT IF IT DOES NOT CONTAIN A TREAT? WHAT IF THE TREAT IN THE HAND IS MERELY AN ILLUSION? OH DEAR THIS SITUATION IS CAUSING ME TO HAVE AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS.

. . .

Stay tuned this week for more Duyckinck dogs in Old New York!

  Notes ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­________________

1. The Political Graveyard, “Van Cortlandt, Pierre,” http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/vanche-vandewater.html#RI5172MPC, accessed January 14, 2015; Wikipedia, “Pierre van Cortlandt,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Van_Cortlandt, accessed January 14, 2015;

2. “Oloff Stevense van Cortlandt," Geni entry, http://tinyurl.com/olr9sn2, accessed January 13, 2015; "Olaf Stevense van Cortlandt," Ancestry entry, http://tinyurl.com/pqpa5bw, accessed January 13, 2015; Wikipedia, "Pierre van Cortlandt," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Van_Cortlandt, accessed January 13, 2015; The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, 1874, p. 72, http://tinyurl.com/peoa2z9; Martha Lamb, et al., History of the City of New York: Its Origin, Rise, and Progress, Volume 1 (New York: Cosimo, Inc., 2005), p. 420, http://tinyurl.com/qcp6d8c; John Jay Du Bois, “Jay–Van Cortlandt Relationships,” http://jsdubois28.com/2014/09/07/jay-van-cortlandt-relationships, accessed January 13, 2015; RootsWeb, “Jacobus ‘Jacob’ van Cortlandt,” http://tinyurl.com/oleac9c, accessed January 14, 2015.