Cheating at Cards

c. 1650 - 1668

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 48.7 cm × width 68.8 cm
outer size: depth 4.3 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, lower left, on the container: Jan Molenaer

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 0.5 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1628. The panel could have been ready for use by 1639, but a date in or after 1645 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of warm beige pigment particles with a small addition of very fine earth pigments.
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. The composition was built up from dark to light. The semi-transparent brownish initial lay-in of the architecture and figures has remained partly visible. The more opaque and lighter colours were then added, introducing further detail and form. The beams in the background were executed with quick and sketchy brushstrokes. The dog, jugs and woman in the foreground, as well as the faces of the other figures are rendered with more detail and show fine though still quite rapid brushwork. The paint surface is smooth throughout.
Jessica Roeders, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: J. Roeders, RMA, nos. SK-A-3023/1-2, 13 February 2008
infrared photography: J. Roeders, RMA, 13 February 2008
technical report: J. Roeders, RMA, 13 February 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 9 September 2008

Condition

Fair. The paint surface is slightly abraded, leaving the ground exposed in the background, flesh colours and other light areas. There are some drying cracks, especially in the bright red parts. The thick, glossy and yellowed varnish shows a disturbing crack pattern, particularly in the darker areas.

Provenance

…; sale, Dr Simon Stinstra (1735-1782, Harlingen), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 26 March 1783, no. 84 (‘Op Paneel, hoog 19, breed 26½ duim [48 x 68 cm]. In een Boeren Binnenhuis ziet men voor aan een Tafel zitten een jonge Vrouw, met een oude Man, op de Kaart te speelen; de Vrouw die laat dezelven aan de Omstanders zien, als bevreest te zyn wat zy op zal gooijen tegens haare Party, waar na de Toezienders met verlangen staan te kyken naar de uitkomst van ’t Spel, andere Huislieden zich ondertusschen vermaakende met Drinken; verder is deeze Huismans Wooning aartig versierd met Meubilen en Gereedschappen.’), probably to his daughter, Isabella Stinstra (1760-1829), Amsterdam; her sale, Amsterdam (B. Ogel Wight et al.), 2 July 1829, no. 12 (‘Hoog 48, breed 66 duim [48 x 66 cm]. Een Boeren Binnenhuis, waarin een aantal boeren en boerinnen bezig zyn met kaartspel en andere vermaken, vol werking en levendig van voorstelling.’), fl. 200, to Albertus Brondgeest,¹ probably for Isabella Stinstra’s cousin, Freerk Dirks Fontein (1777-1843), Harlingen; his sale, Harlingen (W. Eekhoff), 19 April 1847, postponed to 26 (30) April 1847 sqq., no. D (‘Hoog 48 d. breed 68 d. [48 x 68 cm] Paneel. Een Boerenbinnenhuis, waarin verscheidene personen rondom eene tafel zitten, acht gevende op het kaartspel tusschen eene jonge vrouw en een oud man, welke laatste, door het houden van een spiegel boven zijn hoofd, bedrogen wordt; vol werking en levendig van voorstelling.’), fl. 165, to his daughter, Dieuwke Fontein (1800-1879), Amsterdam;² collection of her husband, Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam;³ his widow, Dieuwke Fontein, Spaarnberg, Santpoort;⁴ her granddaughter, Olga E.A.E. Wüste, née Baroness Von Gotsch (1848-1924), Santpoort; donated from her estate by her great-niece, Johanna Gerarda Fontein (1857-1941), to the museum, with four other paintings, 1924⁵

Object number: SK-A-3023

Credit line: Gift of J.G. Fontein, Santpoort

The artist

Jan Miense Molenaer (Haarlem c. 1610/11 - Haarlem 1668)

A document of 21 November 1637 states that Molenaer was about 27 years old, which means he was most probably born in 1610, the year of his parents’ marriage, or 1611. He was the oldest son of a Haarlem tailor and his second wife. Two of Molenaer’s brothers, Bartholomeus and Nicolaes, were also artists, and his sister Maria was married to one. Although it is not recorded, Molenaer is considered to have been a pupil of Frans Hals. His four earliest dated paintings are from 1629 and show the influence of Dirck Hals as much, if not more, than that of his older brother Frans.⁶ Molenaer is first mentioned in the contribution list of the Guild of St Luke in 1634. Two years later he wed the artist Judith Leyster in Heemstede. Although his parents were almost certainly Catholics, he married in the Reformed Church. It was also in 1636 that he ran into money problems for the first of many times. By mid-1637 he had moved to Amsterdam, where he soon received the substantial commission for a large group portrait of one of the city’s most important patrician families. That picture, The Wedding Portrait of Willem van Loon and Margaretha Bas, was completed before the end of 1637.⁷ Predominantly a genre painter, in 1639 Molenaer produced one of the few religious works in his oeuvre, the monumental Mocking of Christ, which was probably ordered by the Sint-Odulphuskerk in Assendelft.⁸ Peasant imagery figured only sporadically in Molenaer’s art before his relocation to Amsterdam, but eventually became his major focus after 1640. His principle influences in this genre were Adriaen Brouwer and Isack and Adriaen van Ostade.

By the end of 1648, Molenaer and his family moved out of Amsterdam and divided their time between Haarlem and Heemstede, where they had bought a manor. Molenaer was to pay for this house and one he bought in Amsterdam in 1655 with a combination of cash and paintings. As early as 1656 the couple left the latter city once more to settle in the Heemstede estate. In the period that followed Molenaer was repeatedly involved in court cases involving money owed by and to him. Both ill, he and Leyster drew up a will on 6 November 1659 in Heemstede. His wife died three months later but Molenaer recovered and went on to produce the most accomplished works of his later career. He initially continued to live in the Heemstede manor but eventually rented a house in Haarlem where he spent the remaining five years of his life. Molenaer’s last dated picture is the 1667 Merry Company at a Table.⁹ He died on 15 September 1668 and was buried in the Grote Kerk.

While Ampzing, who did acknowledge Judith Leyster, did not mention Molenaer in 1628, Schrevelius referred to him in 1648 only in passing as Leyster’s husband.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

References
S. Ampzing, Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem in Holland, Haarlem 1628 (reprint Amsterdam 1974), p. 370; T. Schrevelius, Harlemias, Haarlem 1648, p. 384; 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. 163-64; A. Bredius, ‘Het verblijf van Jan Miense Molenaer te Amsterdam, in documenten’, in 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.], VII, Rotterdam 1888-90, pp. 289-304; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, pp. 1-26; ibid., VII, 1921, pp. 154-61; Schneider in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXV, Leipzig 1931, pp. 30-32; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, passim; E. Broersen, ‘“Judita Leystar”: A Painter of “Good, Keen Sense”’, in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, pp. 15-38, esp. pp. 21-37; Weller in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XXI, New York 1996, pp. 813-15; D.P. Weller, ‘Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age’, in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, pp. 9-25; 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. 241-45; Biesboer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XC, Munich/Leipzig 2016, pp. 215-16

Entry

After the mid-1640s Jan Miense Molenaer began to focus increasingly on compositions with merrymaking peasants that were heavily influenced by Adriaen Brouwer and Isack and Adriaen van Ostade.¹⁰ As in the Rijksmuseum Cheating at Cards, the palette in these works is largely tonal and the small-scale figures are set in large barn-like spaces. These interiors most resemble those in paintings by Adriaen van Ostade from the first half of the 1640s,¹¹ while the man passed out on a barrel is probably derived from Brouwer’s Slaughter Feast in Schwerin,¹² and the gnarly drunk seen in profile wearing a red scarf on his head resembles other figures by that Flemish artist.¹³ With the exception of a few highly animated and quite colourful pictures teeming with more meticulously rendered figures from around 1659-62, the quality of Molenaer’s later production is mediocre, as evidenced by the present panel.¹⁴ The lack of dated paintings and the repetition of motifs, such as the man slumped over a barrel,¹⁵ makes it difficult to establish a chronology for Molenaer’s work in the latter part of his career, and a more specific indication than the 1650s or ’60s for this scene cannot be given.

The subject, card playing, was already popular with artists in the Middle Ages, and in the 1520s was depicted by Lucas van Leyden and his followers.¹⁶ The Utrecht Caravaggisti were the first seventeenth-century Dutch painters to employ it. Molenaer treated the theme in one of his earliest known works, Card Players by Lamplight of around 1627-28,¹⁷ and it would remain a favourite throughout his career.

In the Rijksmuseum painting, as in his earliest one of card players and another work of around 1634-35,¹⁸ an old peasant is being cheated out of his money by a figure holding a mirror behind him, revealing his cards to his opponent. This motif had already been used in the northern Netherlands by Dirck van Baburen.¹⁹ As in Molenaer’s early output as well, a figure (or figures in the case of the present one) looks out of the picture and encourages the viewer’s complicity in the swindle. The young woman is also showing us the five cards in her hand, which includes a high one, the ace of clubs.²⁰ Whereas the old peasant’s opponents in Molenaer’s earliest treatments of the subject are dandified soldiers, here he is being cheated by members of his own social and economic class. In keeping with the low status of the company and the humble space they occupy the score is being marked with chalk directly on the table, rather than on a slate, as in a more gentrified interior with card players by Jan Steen, for example.²¹ As in Steen’s painting, though, the chalk in Molenaer’s was probably also intended as an allusion to the Dutch sayings ‘in het krijt staan’ (literally ‘to be in the chalk’: to be in the red) and ‘met dubbel krijt schrijven’ (literally ‘to write with a double chalk’: to charge double).²²

Card playing had a bad reputation in the seventeenth century and was attacked by moralists and discouraged by the civic authorities.²³ Among the vices with which the pastime was related are excessive drinking and idleness. Molenaer also made these associations in the present painting. Two of his peasants are holding glasses, which one of them appears about to replenish from a rather large jug. Idleness is embodied in the slouched figure in the left foreground and the man behind him who has fallen asleep on a barrel.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Collection catalogues

1926, p. 133, no. 1636a; 1934, p. 194, no. 1636a; 1976, p. 392, no. A 3023

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Jan Miense Molenaer, Cheating at Cards, c. 1650 - 1668', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4614

(accessed 5 October 2024 11:27:32).