Object data
oil on copper
support: height 38.4 cm × width 47.5 cm
outer size: depth 4.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Peeter Gijsels
Still Life with Vegetables before a Draped, Overturned Plinth by an Ornamental Fountain
1680 - 1690
Inscriptions
- signature, bottom right: […]ER / […]SELS
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 27 May 2005
Conservation
- conservator unknown, 1914: blisters laid, and revarnished
- M. Zeldenrust, 1999: cleaned, restored, revarnished
Provenance
…; sale, Dr A.H.H. van der Burgh (1845 or 1856-1904, The Hague), Galerie de Portraits de la famille-De la Court [section Van der Burgh], Amsterdam (F. Muller), 21 September 1904, no. 10, fl. 360, to Groenman on behalf of the Vereniging Rembrandt for the museum1
Object number: SK-A-2213
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
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 1641/42,2 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 1649/50.3 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.4 In fact his master, Jan Boets,5 was known as a copyist of the elder Brueghel;6 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,7 and perhaps his depictions of elegantly attired revellers owed much to the work of Jan van der Hecke (1620-1684).8 He executed still lifes in the style of Jacob van Es (c. 1596-1666)9 and Jan Davidsz de Heem (1601-1684)10 which were very different from his more original, late style. His extant oeuvre is not large and dated works are few.11
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
There is no reason to doubt that this still life set in a park is the work of Peeter Gijsels; indeed, there are remnants of his signature. Two similar pictures are in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg,12 and the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp,13 both of which are signed in full; the Antwerp picture is substantially larger. The long coat worn by the man by the steps in the background of the former is similar to one worn in the Kermesse also in the Antwerp Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, which is dated 1687.14 It seems likely that all three paintings were late works, a suggestion supported by the tradition that the Antwerp picture was ‘Gysels’ doodkist’ (‘Gijsels’s coffin’, meaning that he was working on it when he died).15
The three butterflies are, from the left, a red admiral, a great bear, and a cabbage white. The three birds in the centre are a linnet, kingfisher and a goldfinch, above is a parrot and a peacock, and to the right a long-tailed tit and a tomtit. The beetle bottom right is a rhinoceros beetle. The flowers are a tulip, fritillary and larkspur. The monkey is a guenon.16 The carpet is a Transylvanian type woven in Anatolia.17 Bottom right is a late-mannerist-style silver gilt ewer and basin.
The combination of comprehensive still lifes with animals and an elaborate background – whether country house, formal garden or Renaissance-style pavilion – was perhaps inspired at least in part by the art of Pieter Boel (1662-1674), for example his Allegory of Worldly Vanity in the Lille Musée des Beaux Arts of 1663, executed some five years before he left Antwerp for Paris.18 The same characteristics are found in the Dutch Republic in contemporaneous works by Jan Weenix (1642-1719), for example the picture of 1687 in the Staatliches Museum, Schwerin.19
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; E. Greindl, Les peintres flamands de nature morte au XVIIe siècle, Sterrebeek 1983 [ed. princ. 1956], p. 358 under Gijsels
Collection catalogues
1904, Supplement, p. 426, no. 1007a (as signed in full); 1976, p. 251, no. A 2213
Citation
G. Martin, 2022, 'Peeter Gijsels, Still Life with Vegetables before a Draped, Overturned Plinth by an Ornamental Fountain, 1680 - 1690', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8493
(accessed 19 September 2024 23:08:34).