An Officer in Billeted Quarters

c. 1647

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 54.2 cm × width 45.2 cm
outer size: depth 4.5 cm (support incl. SK-L-4310)

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of two vertically grained oak planks (approx. 24.3 and 20.9 cm), approx. 1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1631. The panel could have been ready for use by 1642, but a date in or after 1648 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the edges of the support. The first, slightly translucent cream-coloured layer is followed by a thin, light brown layer consisting of white pigment with a small addition of earth pigments.
Underdrawing Infrared photography and infrared reflectography revealed an elaborate, freely applied underdrawing in what appears to be a dry medium. It delineates most elements of the composition, even up to the individual folds of the clothing. Only a few elements, such as the officer’s hat and coat, were apparently not included in the underdrawing but added later. Some broad hatching was used to mark the shadowed areas along the bottom edge and to the right of the officer. The position of his pipe was altered several times in this stage. The underdrawing was not precisely followed in the painting process. Apart from numerous small deviations in the contours, several adjustments could be detected. In the underdrawing, the officer’s face was tilted further upwards and to the left (almost seen in profile) and his right boot was broader. The position of the boy’s left foot was drawn in a more horizontal pose, the right arm of the woman in the background was originally planned higher up, and the clothes in the lower left corner as well as the garment draped over the wooden partition were placed differently.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front, leaving the elements further forward in reserve. A translucent brown, first lay-in of the composition shows through the thinly applied paint layers of the background. Most of the dark interior is in shades of brown. Colours were added only in the central area with figures and attributes, but even then in a limited palette and with rather transparent, thin paint. Definition was given to the composition with small touches of paint, such as the boy’s exposed knee, which was created with a small efficient brushstroke placed over the finished trousers. Lastly, small touches of paint and highlights were used to enhance modelling, followed by the pale straw scattered around.
Michel van de Laar, Ige Verslype, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 9 September 2008
infrared photography: M. van de Laar, RMA, 11 June 2009
paint samples: M. van de Laar, RMA, nos. SK-A-2573/1-2, 11 June 2009
technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 11 June 2009
infrared reflectography: I. Verslype, RMA, 14 June 2009

Condition

Good. There are some retouchings and damaged areas along the join. The thick varnish is irregular and has yellowed, showing a distinct crack pattern.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1919: varnish mechanically removed; revarnished

Provenance

…; ? sale, Jacob Snels (1683-1762, Gouda) and Baron van Deneke, The Hague (A. Franken), 11 July 1763, no. 84, as Maerten Stoop (‘Een Officier de Laarsen uytgetrokken, wordende, met verder Bywerk, door M. Stoop’), fl. 11;¹…; ? first recorded in the collection of Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague, 1899;² from whom on loan to the museum, 1907-11;³ donated from his estate to the museum, May 1912

Object number: SK-A-2573

Credit line: Gift of the heirs of C. Hoogendijk, The Hague

The artist

Maerten Stoop (? Rotterdam before 1622 - Utrecht 1647)

Maerten Stoop is mentioned in a Utrecht document dated 4 August 1647 as one of the four children of the deceased glass-painter Willem Jansz van der Stoop and his widow Neeltje Jansdr. His name appears last, so he was probably the youngest of the family. On his father’s death, which was recorded in Utrecht on 11 May 1646, all children were described as being of age, in other words older than 25, which means that Maerten was certainly born before 1622. One of his brothers was the slightly older Dirck Stoop, a painter of horses and cavalry skirmishes.

Information about Maerten’s life is scarce. It is logical to assume that he was trained by his father, the more so in that Houbraken states that the latter taught another artist. The way in which Stoop depicts his figures, with his preference for foreshortening and rear views, is reminiscent of the work of Abraham Bloemaert. However, it is not known whether Stoop was ever involved in his Utrecht studio. In 1638 and 1639 a son of Willem Jansz van der Stoop paid three guilders to the Guild of St Luke in Utrecht. Since Dirck was working in Italy in these years this was probably Maerten. The similarity in his compositions and technique with that of Nicolaas Knupfer, who was active in Utrecht around that time, has often led to their authorships being confused. Stoop’s only signed and dated picture is Soldier and a Girl at a Game of Cards of 1644.⁴ He died young in Utrecht in 1647, so his oeuvre is small, consisting mainly of genre scenes with merry companies, interiors with soldiers, monumental guardrooms and a single history painting.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024

References
S. Muller, Schilders-vereenigingen te Utrecht: Bescheiden uit het Gemeente-Archief, Utrecht 1880, p. 123; P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtsche Schilders Dirck en Maerten Stoop’, Oud Holland 51 (1934), pp. 116-35, esp. pp. 116-20, and pp. 174-81; Trautscholdt in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXII, Leipzig 1938, pp. 115-16; J. Rosen, Soldiers at Leisure: The Guardroom Scene in Dutch Genre Painting of the Golden Age, Amsterdam 2010, pp. 15, 71, 75-78, 100-02, 111, 146

Entry

This unsigned panel is probably identical with a work sold in The Hague in 1763 that came from the collection of either Jacob Snels, a local government official in Gouda, or Baron van Deneke.⁵ It was already considered to be from Maerten Stoop’s hand then, and no doubt has been cast on that since.⁶ Comparison with his only signed and dated picture, Soldier and a Girl at a Game of Cards of 1644.⁷ confirms that the attribution is correct. There are similarities in the thin application of paint, with a preference for brown tones with colourful touches here and there in the protagonists. Both works display the same skilful rendering of textures, variations in the lively poses of the figures, a penchant for foreshortened bodies, and the design of the still-life elements on the right. Stoop prepared the Rijksmuseum composition with a detailed underdrawing which was the basis for the scene, although he did depart from it occasionally.⁸ Infrared images show that his initial idea was to have the officer look to his right, setting up more of an interaction with the woman in the background. The painting is undated, but the dendrochronology shows that the support was possibly ready for use by 1642. Since Stoop died in 1647, the picture could be from the last year of his life. There is a copy after it by an unknown artist.⁹

An officer whose spurs are being attached to his boots by a servant is a recurring element in works by guardroom painters such as Anthonie Palamedesz, Pieter Quast and Jacob Duck. It has been interpreted as a reference to the authority and social position of officers, for the motif gave them a certain status.¹⁰ However, the one in Stoop’s scene is shown in his shirt and is leaning against a bed, while holding a pipe in his left hand.¹¹ Smoking was associated with military men, but people were ambivalent about it and it was not considered acceptable social behaviour until well into the seventeenth century.¹² Several genre painters used smoking or handling a pipe as a sly allusion to sexual acts,¹³ and it probably has that connotation here as well. The female figure in the background would then be a prostitute or a brothel-keeper who is collecting her fee for services rendered from a chest with war booty. Women of easy virtue who could be seduced with the spoils of war are also found in the work of Stoop’s fellow townsman Jacob Duck.¹⁴

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

R. Bangel, ‘Die Sammlung Hoogendijk im Rijksmuseum’, Der Cicerone 7 (1915), pp. 171-89, esp. pp. 182-84; P.T.A. Swillens, ‘De Utrechtsche Schilders Dirck en Maerten Stoop’, Oud Holland 51 (1934), pp. 116-35 and pp. 174-81, esp. pp. 176-77; A.E. Waiboer, ‘Gabriel Metsu’s Life, Work and Reputation’, in A.E. Waiboer (ed.), Gabriel Metsu, exh. cat. Dublin (National Gallery of Ireland)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (National Gallery of Art) 2010-11, pp. 1-27, esp. p. 6; A.E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu: Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven/London 2012, p. 31

Collection catalogues

1911, p. 353, no. 2261b; 1934, p. 272, no. 2261b; 1976, p. 527, no. A 2573

Citation

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024, 'Maerten Stoop, An Officer in Billeted Quarters, c. 1647', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5522

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