Fishermen and Farmers

Entry

The paintings Fishermen and Hunters (see SK-A-1447) and Fishermen and Farmers (shown here) probably form a pair. Not only do they have the same provenance, but the format is identical, the scale of the figures is comparable, the subject is very similar, and the monogram is missing on Fisherman and Farmers. Fishermen and Hunters which is monogrammed ‘AA’ and has a group of trees as a repoussoir on the left, is probably the left half of the pairing with Fishermen and Farmers, which is closed off with a tree on the right.⁴ A ‘winter and summer’ by Arentsz were sold together at auction in 1637.⁵ The thematic connection between the two works in the Rijksmuseum is difficult to establish. Both show Arentsz’s distinctive stocky figures of peasants, fishermen and hunters going about their daily lives. In Fishermen and Hunters fishing nets are being mended and set out to dry on the left, while hunters buy fruit from a peasant woman on the right. The contrast between the two works lies in the middleground. In Fishermen and Hunters it is a broad river view, in Fishermen and Farmers it is a green polder landscape. In both cases, as in Fishermen on the Bank of the Amstel (SK-A-2625) one suspects that the location is near or on the outskirts of Amsterdam.

There are quite large ships on the river in Fishermen and Hunters, including a sea-going yacht decked with flags and pennants. The number of ships and their size suggest that this is a view of Amsterdam seen from the IJ. In the centre, to the right of the yacht, is a ship that has been careened, which points to the presence of a dockyard. The city itself, with its houses and bridges, is seen on the horizon behind the ships. The bridges, however, were only found along the banks of the river Amstel, which indicates that this is not a faithful depiction of a specific location but a combination of motifs.⁶ The technique is closely related to that of other paintings by Arentsz, with the ships and the cityscape being executed extremely subtly in transparent blue and white paint.

Unlike most other paintings by Arentsz, the middleground in Fishermen and Farmers takes the form of a green meadow beyond a stream, with strips of freshly mown grass receding towards the background. The various narrative details seem to depict life in a Dutch polder on a day in spring or summer. In the foreground are Arentsz’s distinctive peasants and freshwater fishermen. The couple in the centre are wearing what appears to be the costume of the Waterland region. The man has a rake over his shoulder to turn the hay, and the woman is holding a pitcher.

Much of the original freshness of the scene has probably been lost due to the ageing and darkening of the paint layer, but the suggestion of a summer’s day is still palpable. In this painting, too, there is a clear tonal progression of colour towards the light blue background. The foreground is quite dark (with touches of colour in the peasant’s clothing), with the greens probably having turned brown. The greens also predominate in the lighter middleground. There is a stretch of water with sailing boats in the distance, and on the left what looks like a lake, and towards the centre a river threading its way through the landscape. All of this is depicted cursorily in light blue tints. The foreground figures were reserved in the underpaint, and were probably based on drawn figure studies, for some of them recur in other paintings by Arentsz. That is also the case with the group of men inspecting the hunter’s bag of game by the windmill in the left middleground, which is the main subject in a painting by Arentsz in Budapest.⁷

Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007

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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. 5.