Object data
oil on copper
support: height 27.8 cm × width 34.2 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Peeter Gijsels
Village with a Puppeteer Entertaining a Small Crowd
c. 1650 - c. 1660
Inscriptions
- signature, bottom right: p:Gijs[?]sels
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 27 May 2009
Conservation
- W.A. Hopman, May 1874: varnish regenerated
Provenance
…; collection Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague; his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘Pierre Gijzels. Tableau très soigné, représentant un village avec quantité de chariots, de chevaux & c., cuivre, h. 10¾ l. 13 [28 x 34 cm]’);1 from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Lodewijk Napoleon King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809;2 on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 1999-2011
Object number: SK-A-126
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Peeter Gijsels (Antwerp 1621 - Antwerp 1690/1691)
The landscape and still-life painter Peeter Gijsels was baptized in the Sint-Jacobskerk, Antwerp, on 13 December 1621, the son of Peeter and Lucia Adriaens. His father, a poor rope maker, died in 1625. His mother brought her small family up in poverty; nevertheless, her son was able to buy, in 1641/42,3 an apprenticeship, but unusually late for he was about twenty years old, with the now obscure Jan Boets (or Boots; 1603-after 1684) with whom he remained for about eight to nine years, becoming a master in 1649/50.4 On 13 November 1650, he married Joanna Huybrechts in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, from which union there issued six children. His wife died in 1680/81, he followed in 1690/91.
Gijsels was early admired for his paintings in the style of Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625); indeed, his biographer Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) believed that he was his (or his son’s) pupil.5 In fact his master, Jan Boets,6 was known as a copyist of the elder Brueghel;7 and thus Gijsels would have become acquainted with his art in Boets’s studio. Probably later in his career, he became more indiscriminate in his choice of artistic mentors. There are landscapes in the style of Cornelis (1607/08-1681) and Herman (1609-1685) Saftleven,8 and perhaps his depictions of elegantly attired revellers owed much to the work of Jan van der Hecke (1620-1684).9 He executed still lifes in the style of Jacob van Es (c. 1596-1666)10 and Jan Davidsz de Heem (1601-1684)11 which were very different from his more original, late style. His extant oeuvre is not large and dated works are few.12
He took time to make his mark, for Cornelis de Bie did not mention him in his Het gulden cabinet of 1661. But he wrote in praise of him in his annotated copy of the book. There he described Gijsels’s solitary nature; indeed, it is noteworthy that he never became an officer of the guild and is not recorded as having taken in apprentices.
REFERENCES
F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, III, pp. 39-42
Entry
Although not referred to in the survey of Gijsels’s oeuvre by Thiéry and Kervyn de Meerendré,13 there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this signed picture.
The formula adopted here by Gijsels was repeated in, for instance, his destroyed View of a Village, formerly in the Gemäldegalerie, Alte Mester, Dresden,14 and in his Kermesse of 1687 in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.15 This showed a village occupying much of the composition with a waterway on the right.
The landscape and figure types are handled in the manner of Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625). The costumes of the well-dressed couple are approximately of the second decade of the century. Several figures have their counterparts in landscapes by the elder artist: the seated peasant woman left in an example in the Gemäldegalerie, Alte Meister, Dresden,16 and that facing left in the Rome Palazzo Spada landscape;17 the fishwife is found facing right in a view formerly with David Koetser,18 and a variant of the boy begging in the Village Road with Cattle, Betty and David M. Koetser Foundation, Zürich.19 Indeed, it might well be said that the Rijksmuseum picture is a pastiche of the art of Jan Brueghel I.
There are no comparable dated works by Gijsels, but it seems likely that the present picture was executed early in his career. The puppeteer with the dog reappears as a musician in the Kermesse of 1680 in the Augsburg Staatsgalerie.20 A similar puppeteer was depicted by David Teniers II (1610-1690) in the picture of the 1640s in the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.21 Another was the subject of a signed and dated painting of 1667 by Adriaan Rombouts.22 An earlier similarly dressed jester is depicted in the middle ground of Pieter Brueghel II’s (1564-1638) Kermesse of St George, probably of the 1620s.23
Gregory Martin, 2022
Literature
Zoege von Manteuffel in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 33 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XV, p. 379
Collection catalogues
1809, p. 25, no. 103; 1843, p. 22, no. 103 [‘sound’]; 1853, p. 11, no. 91 [fl. 800]; 1858, p. 403, no. 473; 1885, p. 70, no. 473; 1887, p. 53, no. 420; 1903, p. 109, no. 1007; 1976, p. 251, no. A 126
Citation
G. Martin, 2022, 'Peeter Gijsels, Village with a Puppeteer Entertaining a Small Crowd, c. 1650 - c. 1660', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8492
(accessed 5 October 2024 12:24:37).