Still Life with Implements of War

c. 1635 - c. 1645

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 24 cm × width 21 cm
outer size: height 30 cm × width 27 cm × depth 3.5 cm (support incl. frame and screw eye)

Inscriptions

signature, with ligated monogram, centre left: IB

Technical notes

Support The single, vertically grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 0.5 cm thick on the left and approx. 1.1 cm on the right. Small wooden strips at the top and bottom (approx. 0.7 cm) and on the left and right (approx. 0.5 cm) were added at a later date. The reverse is bevelled on all sides, although less so on the left. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1624. The panel could have been ready for use by 1635, but a date in or after 1641 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, off-white ground does not extend over the edges of the support. It consists of white pigment particles with a tiny addition of earth pigments.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint does not extend over the edges of the support. The composition was painted quickly and efficiently from dark to light in what appear to be only one or two layers. Larger elements were reserved, while small ones, such as the playing cards and rose, were added over the background. The individual elements were underpainted in subdued browns and greys, thinly applied wet in wet and quite smoothly blended, with some indication of light and dark areas and volume. The whitish foreground was then added around the individual implements of war. Very delicate and small lines were used to delineate contours, enhance modelling and add highlights. The highlighted area of the skull on the left has fine hatching. The paint layers are smooth, with only some slight impasto in the contours and highlights.
Ige Verslype, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 October 2005
infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA (no image available), 10 June 2009
paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-2253/1-2, 10 June 2009
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 10 June 2009

Condition

Fair. There are small discoloured retouchings throughout. The paint surface is abraded throughout. The thick varnish is severely discoloured.

Provenance

…; from Mr Maas Geesteranus, Amsterdam, fl. 50, to the museum, May 1907

Object number: SK-A-2253

The artist

Jan Jansz Buesem (? Amsterdam c. 1599/1600 – ? in or after 1653)

In 1649 Jan Jansz Buesem said that he was 49 years old, so he was probably born in 1599 or 1600, most likely in Amsterdam, where he is documented from the 1640s on. By his own account he was a pupil of Pieter Quast, which is unusual, because the latter was his junior by five or six years, so it is also possible that Buesem worked as his assistant in 1630-34. He married Elsgen Goverts, who stated that she was his wife in 1646. It is not known when Buesem died, but the dating of his paintings suggests that it was in or after 1653.

Buesem followed the example of Adriaen Brouwer and Pieter Quast by specializing in depictions of peasants. He also produced still lifes, and in 1640 and 1642 he was paid for painting scenery in the playhouse on Keizersgracht. Problematically, there are several church interiors with his signature.¹ One of them bears the year 1627, which makes it his earliest known dated work.² The subjects and execution of those pictures are untypical of Buesem’s later oeuvre. He may have started out as an architectural painter and then switched to peasants under Brouwer’s influence. His only dated scene in that genre, a canvas with a festive company in a huge barn, is from 1630.³ However, it is assumed that Buesem was still active in the 1650s. A Peasant Inn attributed to him has three peasants in the background who are based on figures in an etching by Adriaen van Ostade from around 1653.⁴

Erlend de Groot, 2022

References
A. Bredius, ‘Jan Buesem’, Oud Holland 26 (1908), pp. 91-92; Bredius in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, V, Leipzig 1911, pp. 198-99; B. Albach, Langs kermissen en hoven: Ontstaan en kroniek van een Nederlands toneelgezelschap in de 17de eeuw, Zutphen 1977, pp. 105-06; Grabach in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XV, Munich/Leipzig 1997, p. 58; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 57

Entry

The monogram ‘IB’ is found on several works that are attributed to Jan Jansz Buesem with a fair degree of certainty,⁵ and it is on the basis of them that this still life was recognized as a Buesem in 2003.⁶ He is probably also the artist of two similar paintings with implements of war that emerged on the art market in 1995 and 1998.⁷

The main elements of the Rijksmuseum picture are a cuirass and shield leaning against a drum on which there is a plumed helmet. To the left is the top half of a horse’s skull with an arrow stuck in it. Hanging on a piece of rope is a glass sphere in which the artist’s reflection can be seen. Lying on the ground at the front are playing cards and a rose. Many of these objects feature in the other two still lifes with implements of war: the horse’s skull, the drum with the plumed helmet, the cards and the glass sphere. In addition, both have a piece of paper with the word ‘Ydel-Heijt’ (Vanity), which immediately explains the meaning of the scenes. The Rijksmuseum painting undoubtedly has the same connotation as an allusion to the transience of earthly things, the fleeting nature of life, the vagaries of fate and the menacing proximity of death in time of war.

The dendrochronology shows that the panel was most probably ready for use in or after 1641.⁸ Both the subject and the markedly diagonal composition appear to have been inspired mainly by the still lifes with implements of war that Willem de Poorter made in 1636.⁹ However, there are differences in the iconography. De Poorter included an imperial crown and sceptre, which seem to indicate that his main aim was to highlight the impermanence of military power and glory.¹⁰ Such regal symbols are missing in Buesem’s painting, which appears to be more about death, adversity and transience in general.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, p. 699, no. 261/1 (as Monogrammist IB)

Collection catalogues

1920, p. 285, no. 1648a (as Monogrammist IB); 1976, pp. 624-25, no. A 2253 (as Monogrammist IB)

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'attributed to Jan Jansz. Buesem, Still Life with Implements of War, c. 1635 - c. 1645', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4629

(accessed 23 November 2024 10:13:05).