Object data
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
support: height 31.1 cm × width 41 cm
frame: height 47.2 cm × width 56.2 cm
sight size: height 30 cm × width 38.8 cm
Willem Cornelisz Duyster
The Tric-trac Players
c. 1625
Inscriptions
- signature, on the carpet (W and C ligated): WC DVYSTE
- label, on the reverse of the frame: L’interieur d’une chambre dans laqu[...] sont qua[...] / Espagnols dont deux jouants au tric trac sur une tab[...] / couverte d’une riche tapis, un autre buvant un verre[..] / blanc et le quatrième vû dans le [...] sur la droit [...] / et s’accompagnent de la mandoline. / Ce tableau précieux dans ses details [...] (The interior of a room in which there are four Spaniards, two of whom are playing tric-trac on a table covered with a fine carpet, another drinking from a glass of white, and the fourth seen from the [...] on the right and accompanying himself on the mandolin. This painting, precious for its details [...])
- label, on the reverse of the frame: Ce tableau précieux dans ses details et d’une conservation / parfaite est regardé à juste titre comme / un des bons ouvrages du maître, vient de la collection de / Mr. Cromat, surintendant des finances de Monsieur / frère du Roi, il est numeroté au catalogue de sa vente 1[.] / et adjugé par le peintre expe. Lebrun au prise de 1787 liv. / Il est signé WDUYSTE. (This painting, precious for its details and in a perfect state of conservation, is rightly considered to be one of the master’s fine works. It comes from the collection of Mr Cromat, Superintendent of Finance of Monsieur, the king’s brother. It was numbered 1[.] in his sale, and was appraised at 1,787 livres by the connoisseur Lebrun. It is signed WDUYSTE.)
Technical notes
The support is an oval-shaped medium-weave canvas which has been lined twice. According to an old label that was on the back of the painting before the relining in 1903, the original support was a panel. A horizontal line in the paint layer, some 6 cm from the bottom edge, suggests that panel consisted of two horizontally joined planks. The off-white ground layer is thin and smooth. The paint was applied thinly and smoothly, with impasted highlights. The size of the sash of the figure on the left appears to have been reduced during the painting process.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 25 October 2004
Condition
Fair. The surface of the paint layer is disturbed due to earlier conservation treatment. There is mild abrasion. The edges were overpainted and some details in the background have been strengthened. The varnish has yellowed.
Conservation
- H. Heijdenrijk, 1903: canvas relined
Provenance
...; French collection, probably late 18th century;1...; donated to the museum by Dr Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), Amsterdam, November 1887;2 on loan to the Fondation Custodia, Paris, 1954-55; on loan to the Limburgs Museum, Venlo, since 2000
Object number: SK-A-1427
Credit line: Gift of A. Bredius, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Willem Cornelisz Duyster (Amsterdam 1599 - Amsterdam 1635)
Willem Cornelis Duyster, the son of a carpenter, was baptized in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 30 August 1599. His surname is derived from the house ‘De Duystere Werelt’ (The dark world), in which he and his family lived from 1620 onwards. His teacher is unknown. It has been speculated that he studied with the portrait painter Cornelis van der Voort or with Barend van Someren. The suggestion that Pieter Codde was his teacher was based on the misinterpretation of a document from 1625 that reveals that Duyster and Codde had a quarrel at Meerhuysen, a country house rented by Van Someren. Duyster was also well-acquainted with the guardroom painter Simon Kick. Duyster and Kick married each other’s sisters in a double wedding on 5 September 1631, and both couples lived in ‘De Duystere Werelt’. Duyster died of the plague at the age of 35. He was buried in the Zuiderkerk on 31 January 1635.
His oeuvre consists of merry companies, guardroom scenes and portraits, close in style to those by Pieter Codde. Few of Duyster’s paintings are dated. Philips Angel praised his skill at painting fabrics in 1642.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Angel 1642, p. 55; Houbraken II, 1719, p. 145; Bredius 1888a; Playter 1972, I, pp. 1-14, 23-35; Beaujean in Saur XXXI, 2002, pp. 343-44
Entry
Two extravagantly clad officers are watching a game of tric-trac. In the background are a man standing drinking, and a seated lutenist. The Persian carpet on the table and the costly materials of the costumes, especially of the two foreground figures, are depicted with a close eye for detail.3
Tric-trac players often feature in Duyster’s paintings. Others that are thematically related to the one in the Rijksmuseum are an oval panel in St Petersburg and a rectangular work in London.4 The same young man was the model for one of the tric-trac players in the London painting and the one on the right in the present work. Duyster seems to have had a preference for oval or circular panels.5 Pieter Codde also used oval panels from time to time.6
Playter dates the Amsterdam work, with its bright colours and small, elongated figures in quasi-masquerade dress, to around 1624, slightly earlier than his more restrained paintings in St Petersburg and London, which are assumed to have been made in the second half of the 1620s.7 Playter’s reasoning is convincing. Like the preceding work, this genre scene would have been painted around the middle of the decade.
A dim view was taken of tric-trac in the 17th century, which is why this painting has been interpreted as a depiction of idleness or the vicissitudes of life,8 but in contrast to a painting like Interior with Gamblers and Drinkers (anonymous, SK-A-1852) there does not appear to be any marked symbolic meaning embedded in this painting.9
In 1888, Abraham Bredius described a label on the back that stated that the painting was transferred from panel to canvas.10 Unfortunately, it has proved impossible to identify the ‘Mr. Cromat, surintendant des finances de Monsieur frère du Roi’ who owned the painting according to the label on the back of the frame. It is possible that his name, which was copied from the other, damaged label on the frame, was misread.11
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 64.
Literature
Bredius 1888a, p. 194; Playter 1972, I, p. 79, II, p. I
Collection catalogues
1891, p. 41, no. 304a; 1903, p. 91, no. 850; 1934, p. 90, no. 850; 1976, p. 207, no. A 1427; 2007, no. 64
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Willem Cornelisz. Duyster, The Tric-trac Players, c. 1625', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8366
(accessed 26 November 2024 07:39:19).