12.3 Forty Years Professor and Seventieth Birthday
259
Fig. 12.3 The painting by Kapteyn at his desk, which Jan Veth made on the occasion of
his 40th jubilee as a professor. The person at the top right is David Gill. The painting
is now in the Kapteyn Room of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen (see
Fig. 0.2).
sultation with the other Kapteyn descendants, it was decided to donate the
painting to the University of Groningen after Jacoba Cornelia’s death (as well
as the star chart in Fig. 2.2). The painting is reproduced in Fig. 12.3. Blaauw
also mentioned the following about it in the proceedings of a 1999 symposium
on Kapteyn, The Legacy of J.C. Kapteyn by myself and Klaas van Berkel [4].
Pieter van Rhijn, successor of Kapteyn and predecessor of Blaauw, had once
told him that Mrs. Kapteyn did not like the portrait presented, because—she
would have said—‘I do not know him like that. I know him sitting at his desk.’
Jan Veth has made a new painting and this now hangs in the Kapteyn Room
(see Figs. 0.2 and 12.3). But what happened to the original painting? Adriaan
Blaauw assumed that it was over-painted by Veth himself with a gown, jabot
and beret, and that it was donated to the University to be placed in the gallery
of professors in the Senate Room in the Academy Building when Kapteyn
went into retirement in 1921 (Fig. 12.4). Blaauw examined that painting, together with the curator of the University Museum, and found traces of this
259
Fig. 12.3 The painting by Kapteyn at his desk, which Jan Veth made on the occasion of
his 40th jubilee as a professor. The person at the top right is David Gill. The painting
is now in the Kapteyn Room of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen (see
Fig. 0.2).
sultation with the other Kapteyn descendants, it was decided to donate the
painting to the University of Groningen after Jacoba Cornelia’s death (as well
as the star chart in Fig. 2.2). The painting is reproduced in Fig. 12.3. Blaauw
also mentioned the following about it in the proceedings of a 1999 symposium
on Kapteyn, The Legacy of J.C. Kapteyn by myself and Klaas van Berkel [4].
Pieter van Rhijn, successor of Kapteyn and predecessor of Blaauw, had once
told him that Mrs. Kapteyn did not like the portrait presented, because—she
would have said—‘I do not know him like that. I know him sitting at his desk.’
Jan Veth has made a new painting and this now hangs in the Kapteyn Room
(see Figs. 0.2 and 12.3). But what happened to the original painting? Adriaan
Blaauw assumed that it was over-painted by Veth himself with a gown, jabot
and beret, and that it was donated to the University to be placed in the gallery
of professors in the Senate Room in the Academy Building when Kapteyn
went into retirement in 1921 (Fig. 12.4). Blaauw examined that painting, together with the curator of the University Museum, and found traces of this