Object data
oil on panel
support: height 29.6 cm × width 41 cm
support: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-2360)
Pieter Jansz Quast
The Foot Operation
c. 1634 - c. 1640
Inscriptions
- signature, with ligated monogram, bottom centre, below the stool: PQ
Technical notes
Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 1.0 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks at the top and irregular deeper cuts at the bottom. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1623. The panel could have been ready for use by 1634, but a date in or after 1640 is more likely. The plank is from the same tree as the one for Quast’s Card Players with Woman Smoking a Pipe (SK-A-1298).
Preparatory layers The single, solid white ground extends over the edges of the support. It is followed by a thin, beige-coloured imprimatura which was applied with fluid, mostly horizontal brushstrokes that are clearly apparent in the thinner applied areas and at the edges.
Underdrawing Some schematic contour lines and parallel hatching, in what appears to be a dry medium, could be detected in the figures with infrared photography. These are also visible with the naked eye under magnification.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The initial layers of the figures were applied first, using the beige of the ground as a mid-tone in the flesh and other light areas, followed by the background which was used to adjust the outlines of the figures. The relatively stiff paint was applied thickly in shadows and highlights, particularly where mixed with white. Some of these areas were brushed out with a soft brush, occasionally resulting in unusual diagonal wet-in-wet striations, as in the face of the quack on the far right. Tonal gradations within defined shapes such as the skull and the flesh were often applied wet in wet.
Meta Chavannes, 2024
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: M. Chavannes, RMA, 28 April 2009
- paint samples: M. Chavannes, RMA, nos. SK-A-1756/1-2, 28 April 2009
- technical report: M. Chavannes, RMA, 28 April 2009
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 10 November 2009
Condition
Fair. The thinner painted areas have become more transparent. Minute crater-like holes, the result of metal soap formation, are visible in the foreground and the blue robe of the figure in the centre. A circular pattern of drying cracks can be seen in the upper paint layer in the foreground. The varnish has slightly yellowed and has some shallow scratches.
Conservation
- M. Bijl, 1980: complete restoration
Provenance
…; bequeathed by Daniel Franken Dzn (1838-1898), Amsterdam and Le Vésinet, to the museum, with 54 other paintings, 18981
Object number: SK-A-1756
Credit line: D. Franken Bequest, Le Vésinet
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Pieter Jansz Quast (Amsterdam c. 1605/06 - Amsterdam 1647)
It can be deduced that Pieter Jansz Quast was probably born in Amsterdam in 1605 or 1606 from the posting of his marriage banns on 29 June 1632, in which he stated that he was 26 years old. His father may have been Hans Quast from Antwerp. Documents show that the painter’s marriage to Annetie Splinters of The Hague only took place under the threat of fines and other sanctions. It was ultimately solemnized on 19 December 1632.
It is not known with whom Quast trained. In 1634 he enrolled in the Guild of St Luke in The Hague, the city where he lived until his return to Amsterdam in 1643. Annual financial disputes over unpaid bills in the period 1640-44 show that his life was not always plain sailing, and court cases in 1643 and 1644 suggest that arguments and physical assault were not uncommon in the Quast household. The artist was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam on 29 May 1647. His pupils were Jan Jansz Buesem (c. 1599/1600-in or after 1653) and Dirck Cornelisz de Hoogh (1613-1651). A sketchbook belonging to Prince Willem II containing drawings after works by Quast and a portrait that the artist drew of him was for a long time thought to show that he gave the young prince drawing lessons, but there is no other evidence for this.
Pieter Quast was a painter, draughtsman, etcher and woodcarver who is best known for his peasant and tavern scenes, which often have a satirical undertone. In 1632 a list was made of all the paintings he owned, and they included a remarkable number of his own histories. He also rendered theatrical subjects, tavern brawls, tronies, as well as a few portraits and landscapes. The quality of his work is variable. His highly detailed graphite and chalk drawings on vellum were a valuable contribution to the seventeenth-century graphic arts. His earliest signed and dated paintings include a 1628 Vertumnus and Pomona and Stable Interior with an Officer;2 a late picture is The Triumph of Folly of 1643.3 Quast’s oeuvre, with its often caricature types and simple spatial constructions, is reminiscent of that of genre painters like Adriaen van Ostade and Adriaen Brouwer, whose names were often wrongly attached to his works.
Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024
References
F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], III, Rotterdam 1880-81, p. 263; A. Bredius, ‘Aus den haager Archiven’, Kunstchronik 17 (1882), cols. 553-55, 573-75, 667-68, 686-89, 747-50, esp. cols. 667-68; A. Bredius, ‘Pieter Jansz. Quast’, Oud Holland 20 (1902), pp. 65-82; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, pp. 273-74; Juynboll in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXVII, Leipzig 1933, p. 502; B.A. Stanton-Hirst, The Influence of the Theatre on the Works of Pieter Jansz. Quast, diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison 1978, pp. 46-49; B.A. Stanton-Hirst, ‘Pieter Quast and the Theatre’, Oud Holland 96 (1982), pp. 213-37, esp. pp. 234-36; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, p. 370; Härting in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XCVII, Munich/Leipzig 2018, pp. 253-54
Entry
The cool grey tonality and bright palette of this painting are fairly unique in Pieter Quast’s oeuvre, and the execution is far more refined than that of his other panel in the Rijksmuseum.4 There is no doubt about its authenticity, though. It is monogrammed and can be placed within the artist’s oeuvre without any trouble at all due to its affinity with a small group of genre scenes depicting medical procedures.5 In addition, the wooden support is from the same tree as the museum’s other work by Quast, which is datable around 1635-40. This one can also be attributed to the second half of the 1630s on the evidence of the dendrochronology, as well as on the basis of the similarities to a signed 1634 Tooth-Puller in the arrangement of the figures, the use of colour and light, the design of the drapery folds and the definition of the space.6 In a slightly larger replica measuring 37 x 49 centimetres on the art market in 1995, the still-life elements on either side of the composition are shown in their entirety and the book and skull are set further to the left of the figures.7
Quast’s work has often been associated with that of Adriaen Brouwer, who created a similarly farcical mood with the caricature figures in his genre pieces. Quast’s two-plane composition, with a group in the foreground and background, seems to reverse Brouwer’s Village Barber of around 1631, which has almost the same dimensions.8 The simple structuring of the space and the way in which objects are placed within it in isolation is also reminiscent of the interiors by the early David Teniers II from the first half of the 1630s.9
Depictions of medical procedures are often also references to the sense of touch. Eighteenth-century sale catalogues list several series of the five senses by Quast,10 but it is not known whether the Rijksmuseum panel ever formed part of one. The surgeon is surrounded by his paraphernalia. The skull on the book is an allusion to mortality and as such does not inspire much confidence in the outcome of the treatment. The inclusion of a skeleton makes that implication even more marked in a painting of the same subject by Quast in Princeton.11 Such operations can show the surgeon in an unflattering light or refer to his deception.12 The patient in the foreground of the Rijksmuseum picture, who is holding a second, short-sighted companion by the hand, may symbolize blindness to the deceit of the old quack. However, the work does not appear to be making any strict moral exhortation to the viewer, but given the caricature types seems to be more of a satirical scene.
Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
A. Bredius, ‘Pieter Jansz. Quast’, Oud Holland 20 (1902), pp. 65-82, esp. pp. 66-67
Collection catalogues
1899, p. 76, under no. 1151; 1903, p. 216, no. 1933; 1934, p. 232, no. 1933; 1976, p. 459, no. A 1756
Citation
Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024, 'Pieter Jansz. Quast, The Foot Operation, c. 1634 - c. 1640', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5189
(accessed 5 October 2024 07:29:28).