Object data
oil on panel
support: height 36.5 cm × width 34.5 cm
frame: height 54 cm × width 51 cm × depth 8 cm
Adriaen van Ostade
c. 1647 - c. 1650
oil on panel
support: height 36.5 cm × width 34.5 cm
frame: height 54 cm × width 51 cm × depth 8 cm
Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 1.4 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 1625. The panel could have been ready for use by 1636, but a date in or after 1642 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, off-white ground extends over the edges of the support and barely fills the grain of the wood. It consists of fine white and larger whitish pigment particles and a small amount of orange pigment.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support at the top and bottom, and over the left and right edges. An initial lay-in of the figures was made with a fairly transparent light brown paint, consisting of large white and slightly smaller black and white pigment particles, as well as very fine orange and blue pigment particles. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light. The figures were reserved in the background, leaving the ground or the initial lay-in locally visible along the contours. The darker areas consist of thin, semi-transparent layers, while the lighter areas, such as the sky seen through the window and the illuminated passages, are more opaque. The painter’s implements were rendered with only a few small, deftly placed brushstrokes. There is visible brushmarking throughout along the contours of the various compositional elements.
Anna Krekeler, 2022
Good. The reverse has some woodworm damage but is stable. There are small, fine drying cracks in the painter’s sleeve, along the lower left edge and in the left table leg. The paint along the upper right edge and below the table has a whitish haze.
…; sale, Jacob van der Lely (1698-1795, Delft), Delft (J. de Groot), 5 April 1796, no. 4 (‘In een Binnenvertrek zit een Schilder voor den Ezel, terwyl een Jongeling Verw wryft, en een ander de Palet tempert, met meer Bywerk […] op Paneel, door A. van Ostade, hoog 14 breed 13 duim [36 x 33.5 cm].’), fl. 211, to Gerrit van der Pot (1732-1807), Lord of Groeneveld, Rotterdam;1 his sale, Rotterdam (Gebr. Van Ryp), 6 June 1808 sqq., no. 96 (‘Hoog 13¾, en breed 13 duim [35 x 33 cm]. Pnl. In eene Schilderkamer ziet men op den voorgrond eene Schilder, voor zijn Ezel gezeten, aan een daar staande Tafereel bezig schijnende te arbeiden. Ter zijde van dezelve ligt een bruine Hond; achter in het vertrek staat een Jongen Verw te wrijven; wat verder een ton, waarop eenige teekeningen liggen, en een daarbij staande leering, die Verw op het Palet tempert. Verrijkt met een aantal bijwerk. Het door een kozijn invallend licht doet een goed effect. […]’), fl. 600, to Van Lennep, for the museum2
Object number: SK-A-298
Copyright: Public domain
Adriaen van Ostade (Haarlem 1610 - Haarlem 1685)
Adriaen van Ostade was the fifth child of the weaver Jan Hendricx van Ostade and Janneke Hendricx. He was baptized in the Reformed Church in Haarlem on 19 December 1610. According to Houbraken, whose information may not be reliable, he was a pupil of Frans Hals at the same time as Adriaen Brouwer. While Hals left no discernable imprint on his oeuvre, the influence of Brouwer, who lived in Haarlem from 1623/24 to 1631/32, is very apparent in Van Ostade’s early work. His activity as an artist is documented only in 1632, when he had already reached the age of 22. Peasants Playing Cards from a year later is Van Ostade’s earliest signed and dated picture.3 He first appears on the Guild of St Luke’s contribution list in 1634. On 30 March 1640, in settlement of a debt to Salomon van Ruysdael, the Court of Petty Sessions ordered him to pay three days’ worth of board at a guilder a day and to spend five hours producing a painting with a value of seven guilders. It is not known whether Adriaen van Ostade himself had lived in Van Ruysdael’s house and received instruction from him.
Van Ostade married twice, first to Machteltje Pietersdr, who was a Catholic, so he probably converted to her religion at the time of their wedding in 1638. Fifteen years after Machteltje’s death in 1642, Anna Ingels became his wife, a scion of a prominent Amsterdam Catholic family. The painter spent his entire life in his native city and appears to have been relatively well-off. In 1647 and 1662, he served as warden of the Guild of St Luke, and in 1662-63 as dean. From 1633 to 1669 he was a member of the third platoon of the second company of the St George Civic Guard. Living to the age of 74, Van Ostade had a long and productive career. He was interred in the family grave in the Grote Kerk in Haarlem on 2 May 1685.
Several hundred paintings by Adriaen van Ostade have survived, mostly depictions of peasant life but also a few landscapes, biblical scenes and portraits. More than 400 drawings, including over 50 detailed watercolours executed in the period 1672-84, have been preserved. A renowned printmaker in his own day, 50 of his etchings have come down to us. The Haarlem landscape artist Evert Adriaensz Oudendijck is recorded as his apprentice in 1663. According to Houbraken, Van Ostade’s younger brother Isack (1621-1649) was also his pupil, as were Jan Steen (1626-1679), Cornelis Bega (c. 1631-1664), Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705) and Cornelis Dusart (1660-1704). Van Gool also mentions that Willem Doudyns (1630-1697) trained with him.
Jonathan Bikker, 2022
References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, p. 258; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 347-49; J. van Gool, De nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen: Waer in de levens- en kunstbedryven er tans levende en reets overleedene schilders, die van Houbraken, noch eenig ander schryver, zyn aengeteekend, verhaelt worden, I, The Hague 1750, p. 359; A.P. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gilde aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 170-74; Fritz in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXVI, Leipzig 1932, pp. 74-75; A. Bredius, ‘Een en ander over Adriaen van Ostade’, Oud Holland 56 (1939), pp. 241-47; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, passim; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, I, Hamburg 1981, pp. 28-33, 36-47; Schnackenburg in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XXIII, New York 1996, pp. 609-12; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 258-60; A. Ebert, Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, pp. 19-22; Seelig in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XCIII, Munich/Leipzig 2017, pp. 528-30
There are four known depictions of painter’s studios by Adriaen van Ostade: a drawing in Berlin,4 an etching which exists in 12 states,5 the present undated panel, and another one of 1663 in Dresden.6 Some scholars have assigned the Rijksmuseum work to around the same time as the Dresden picture,7 and even an execution in the first half of the 1670s has been proposed,8 but Schnackenburg’s suggestion that it was made around 1645 is more plausible,9 although perhaps a couple of years should be added to that. The box-like space of the interior with its diagonal side wall first appears in Van Ostade’s paintings and etchings in 1647.10 The overall brown tonality and the heavily shadowed background differ from the typical blonde hues and even lighting of the 1663 Dresden scene, and suggest a dating to the end of the 1640s, as does the relatively sketchy treatment of the figures. This is also supported by the dendrochronology, which shows that the panel would probably have been ready for use around 1642.11 The drawn painter’s studio in Berlin, which has an entirely different design, was convincingly placed around 1645 by Schnackenburg,12 and thus seems to precede the Rijksmuseum picture. Although it has been claimed that Van Ostade’s extant print of the subject is freely based on the present composition and should therefore be given an early date,13 it actually has more in common with the 1663 work in Dresden. It has been argued that the latter painting may be connected with Van Ostade’s election as dean of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1662, and that the one in the Rijksmuseum can be related to his naming as the guild’s warden in 1647,14 but this seems rather speculative.15
The studio inhabited by Van Ostade’s Amsterdam and Dresden painters differs little from the humble, often ramshackle and cluttered abodes found in his peasant interiors. The room in the Rijksmuseum work includes a mezzanine and a dividing wall in the background made of rough-hewn boards, giving the impression that the space may have originally functioned as a barn. Similar wooden partitions occur in a number of earlier seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish workshop scenes.16 Various nineteenth and early-twentieth-century commentators believed that the Rijksmuseum picture is of Van Ostade’s actual atelier and that it features himself.17 However, just as the interior is a product of Van Ostade’s imagination, the painter, who is seen from behind, is undoubtedly a fanciful stereotype. His beret, which had been a fashionable item of clothing in the sixteenth century, was already completely outdated before the beginning of the seventeenth century, and it was by way of Rembrandt’s self-portraits and those of his followers, including Gerrit Dou, that this archaic headgear became the artist’s attribute par excellence.18 The slits in the sleeves are probably also a fictitious detail meant to transport the figure to the level of the cliché type.19 In the early states of the print, the preposterously tall bonnet and exaggeratedly pointed chin and nose move the painter into the realm of caricature.
While the setting and the artist’s costume are fanciful, other elements would not be out of place in an actual seventeenth-century Dutch workshop. Behind the painter a boy is busy grinding pigments, which according to Karel van Mander’s didactic poem Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const (fol. 51, line 48) and apprenticeship contracts was one of the responsibilities assigned to pupils.20 Next to him is an older man setting up the artist’s palette. Often also identified as a student in the literature, this figure’s age suggests that he is more likely to be an assistant, possibly a master painter who could not afford a studio of his own or was not inclined to establish one because of a lack of substantial talent.21 The large cloth suspended from the ceiling also appears in other seventeenth-century Dutch depictions of artists’ workshops, including a drawing from around 1658 by Rembrandt.22 It has been suggested that its function here is to keep dust off of the landscape in the making.23 If that were so, it would be a truly comic element, given the gaping cracks between the boards of the ceiling and the holes in the piece of fabric itself. However, the position above the window and not above the easel in Rembrandt’s drawing and other studio scenes supports an alternative hypothesis, which is that the cloth was a device to reflect light.24
A Latin inscription first appearing on state V of Van Ostade’s etching reads in translation: ‘Though you a painter, paint a painting with Apelles’ art which now fools painters, and now the birds. Yet, gnawing envy, unless fortune bless you, will take away the prizes worthy of your talents.’25 As this state of the print can be dated to before 1670 it has been convincingly argued that these lines were inscribed on the plate by Van Ostade himself or under his supervision.26 The Rijksmuseum picture may carry a message similar to that expressed in the poem to the effect that the artist’s hard work may potentially be in vain. Certainly, his intense concentration and the industriousness of his pupil and assistant contrast not only with the inactivity of the sleeping dog at the boy’s feet but also with the dilapidated condition of his humble surroundings. Van Ostade perhaps intentionally placed the horse skull mounted on the wall above a bookcase on the same vertical axis as the painter in order to reinforce this vanitas notice.
Jonathan Bikker, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, IX, London 1842, p. 100, no. 69; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, III, Esslingen/Paris 1910, p. 175, no. 97; Mai in A. Büttner (ed.), Wettstreit der Künste: Malerei und Skulptur von Dürer bis Daumier, exh. cat. Munich (Haus der Kunst)/Cologne (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum) 2002, p. 328, no. 119; R. Priem, Dutch Masters from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, exh. cat. Melbourne (National Gallery of Victoria) 2005, pp. 14-15; K. Kleinert, Atelierdarstellungen in der niederländischen Genremalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts: Realistisches Abbild oder glaubwürdiger Schein?, Petersberg 2006, pp. 133, 134, 135, 140, 155-56, 286-87, no. 53, with earlier literature; A. Ebert, Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, pp. 124, 154, 226, 233-36, 249, note 1177, 254, 263
1809, p. 52, no. 228; 1843, p. 45, no. 235 (‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 21, no. 205 (fl. 1,000); 1858, pp. 102-03, no. 227; 1880, p. 238, no. 260; 1887, p. 128, no. 1070; 1903, p. 201, no. 1813; 1934, p. 215, no. 1813; 1960, p. 233, no. 1813; 1976, p. 430, no. A 298
Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Adriaen van Ostade, The Painter’s Studio, c. 1647 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4902
(accessed 22 November 2024 17:23:43).