Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 155.5 cm × width 201 cm
outer size: depth 8 cm (support incl. frame)
overall: weight 27 kg
Adriaen van Nieulandt (I)
Galatea and Acis (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XIII)
1651
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower right on a plank: Adriaen van Nieuland ƒ 1651
Technical notes
The support is composed of two strips of plain-weave canvas with a vertical seam and has been lined. Deep cusping is present on all sides. The ground layer has a red colour. The paint layers were finely applied without visible brushmarking or impasto.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 25 May 2005
Condition
Poor. The numerous restored holes and tears have discoloured and are lifting. The varnish is extremely discoloured.
Provenance
...; donated to the museum by Dr Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), The Hague, May 18921
Object number: SK-A-1582
Credit line: Gift of A. Bredius, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Adriaen van Nieulandt I (Antwerp c. 1586 - Amsterdam 1658)
From the inscription accompanying his engraved portrait in Johannes Meyssens’s 1649 Image de divers hommes desprit sublime we know that Adriaen van Nieulandt was born in Antwerp around 1586 and that he received his training from Pieter Isaacsz and, in 1607, from Frans Badens in Amsterdam. His uncle, Willem van Nieulandt I, and his brothers Willem II and Jacob were also painters. In 1589, the Calvinist Van Nieulandt family moved to Amsterdam, where Adriaen apparently spent the rest of his life. In 1609, he married Catelijnken Thomasdr Raes in that city. His earliest signed and dated painting, an Annunciation to the Shepherds, is from the same year.2
Van Nieulandt supplemented his income as painter and, occasionally, printmaker, by dealing in and valuing works of art. He was also active as a real estate broker. His daughter, Abigael, married the painter Salomon Koninck, and Carel Badens (1595-1635) may have been his pupil.
The majority of his paintings are of biblical and mythological subjects, often represented with myriad small-scale figures. His oeuvre, however, also includes portraits, cityscapes, architecture views and still lifes. Among his patrons was the Danish court, to which he delivered history paintings in 1619-20, 1639 and 1649. In 1625, he completed Claes Lastman’s Company of Captain Abraham Boom and Lieutenant Anthonie Oetgens van Waveren,3 and, in 1633, he painted the Annual Procession of the lepers on Printers’ Monday for the Leper House.4
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Meyssens 1649, unpag.; Von Wurzbach II, 1910, p. 234; Bredius I, 1915, pp. 171-82; Bredius VII, 1921, pp. 166-68; Thieme/Becker XXV, 1931, p. 470; Briels 1987, pp. 66-68; Van Suchtelen in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 312-13; Briels 1997, pp. 364-65
Entry
The sea-nymph Galatea and her lover Acis, a barely 16-year-old Sicilian shepherd, are shown in this painting riding in a chariot pulled by sea-horses. The couple is accompanied by nereids, tritons and putti, some of which are transported by strange sea-creatures. Not shown in the scene is the Cyclops Polyphemus, whose desire for Galatea would lead him to hurl a huge rock at his young rival. Although only touched by the tip of the rock, Acis died and was turned into the river at the foot of Mount Etna that bears his name to this day. The rushes held by the putto riding the dolphin-like sea-creature on the right of the painting and by one of the putti floating in the sky, as well as those adorning the heads of three of the men emerging from the sea, foreshadow Acis’ fate. When he was transformed into a river a garland of waving rushes sprouted from his head.
Famous versions of the story were painted by Raphael for the Villa Farnesina, Annibale Carracci for the Farnese Gallery, and Poussin. Teeming with relatively small-scale figures, Van Nieulandt’s composition was probably based on the Antwerp artist, Frans Francken the Younger’s paintings of a related scene, The Triumph of Amphitrite, one version of which, in Sarasota, is signed and dated 1631.5
Catalogued in the past as being signed and dated 1656, the clearly legible date actually reads 1651. Van Nieulandt had already treated the theme in 1646 on panel and on a smaller scale.6 The composition of the left side of the Rijksmuseum painting was based on the earlier version but includes more figures. The number of figures on the right side of the painting, by contrast, has been greatly reduced. The description of a painting in the inventory of Van Nieulandt’s estate suggests that one of these versions of Galatea and Acis may still have been in the artist’s possession at the time of his death: ‘Another one [painting] done by him [Adriaen van Nieulandt] being a sea with nude figures, fl. 12’.7
Jonathan Bikker, 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. 225.
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 194, no. 1749 (as Amphitrite); 1932, p. 210, no. 1749 (as Amphitrite); 1976, p. 417, no. A 1582 (as dated 1656); 2007, no. 225
Citation
J. Bikker, 2007, 'Adriaen van (I) Nieulandt, Galatea and Acis (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XIII), 1651', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4752
(accessed 21 September 2024 16:54:25).