Object data
oil on copper
support: height 37.5 cm × width 46 cm
Cornelis van Poelenburch
Satyrs Peeping at Nymphs
after 1627
Technical notes
The support is a copper plate with an even white ground. The opaque paint was applied smoothly. It is transparent in places, most notably in the dark brown foreground and rocks on the left. The detail of the landscape was rendered with glazes, which is particularly noticeable in the foliage of the trees on the left.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 3 December 2002
Condition
Good.
Provenance
...; sale, Augustin Blondel de Gagny (1695-1776), Paris (P. Remy), 10 December 1776 sqq., no. 48, with one other painting (‘Deux tableaux, l’un représente Diane se reposant au sortir du bain, l’autre des femmes qui sont au bain, plusieurs d’entre elles paroissent effrayées de voir deux Satyres qui les regardent. [...] Dans le premier, on compte 14 figures, & 11 dans le second. Ils sont peints sur cuivre, & chacun porte 14 pouces de haut, sur 17 pouces de large [36.6 x 44.5 cm]’), fr. 4,801, to his son Barthélémy-Augustin-Blondel d’Ázincourt;1...; sale, Claude Tolozan (1728-96, Lyon), Paris (A. Paillet et al.), 23 February 1801 sqq., no. 92 (‘Ce sujet, aussi riche que le précédent et de même qualité, offre plusieurs nymphe seffrayées au sortir du bain, en apercevant deux satyres qui les surprennent. Un admirable fond de paysage et les plus précieux lointains se détachent sur un ciel d’azur, indiquant une belle matinée. [...] Peint sur cuivre, haut de 17, large de 14 pouces [44.5 x 36.6 cm]’), fr. 1,005, to the Brussels dealer and flower painter Pieter Joseph Thijs, for Gerrit van der Pot (1732-1807), Lord of Groeneveld, Rotterdam;2 his sale, Rotterdam (Gebr. Van Rijp), 6 June 1808 sqq., no. 101 (‘Peint sur bois, haut de 14 pouces et demi, et large de 17 et demi [37.9 x 45.8 cm]. Charmant paysage montagneux, où l’on apperçoit plusieurs Nymphes nu sortir du bain, qui effrayées se sauvent à la vue de deux Satyres, qu’elles découvrent derrière les broussailles. Dans le fond, un lointain magnifique et un ciel d’azur indiquent une belle matinée. [...]’), fl. 660, to the museum3
Object number: SK-A-313
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Cornelis van Poelenburch (Utrecht 1594/95 - Utrecht 1667)
Van Poelenburch’s date of birth can be established on the basis of a document dated 21 January 1601 stating that he was six years old at the time. He was the son of Simon van Poelenburch (d. 1596), a Roman Catholic canon of Utrecht Cathedral. According to Von Sandrart, Van Poelenburch trained with Abraham Bloemaert. By 1617 he was in Rome, where he signed a poem in the album amicorum of Wybrand de Geest. He was one of the founding members of the Schildersbent (Band of Painters) where he adopted the sobriquet ‘Satiro’, evidently bestowed on him because of the subjects of many of his pictures. Van Poelenburch’s earliest known works are two drawings dated 1619, which according to their inscription ‘te tievele’, were drawn in the Tiburtine hills.4 His first dated painting, the View of the Campo Vaccino is from 1620.5 According to Von Sandrart, Van Poelenburch was also in Florence, where he was employed by Cosimo II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He is recorded in Rome in 1622, but it is not known how long he remained in Italy. On 6 April 1627 he is recorded for the first time back in Utrecht, where he negotiated the purchase of one of his pictures, the Banquet of the Gods, by the States of Utrecht.6 Two years later he married Jacomina van Steenre. According to an inscription on a drawing of the Bastille he was in Paris in 1631.7 He lived in London from 1637 to 1641, returning to Utrecht at least once in 1638. Later in his career he held prominent positions in the Utrecht Guild of St Luke (warden in 1656, dean in 1657-58 and 1664). He was buried in the city’s Magdalena Kerk on 12 August 1667.
Van Poelenburch received commissions from important patrons, amongst whom Frederick V, Elector of the Palatinate, and Charles I of England. Together with Abraham Bloemaert, Herman Saftleven and Dirck van der Lisse, he worked on four scenes from Guarini’s Il pastor fido for Stadholder Frederik Hendrik at Honselaarsdijk (c. 1633), and Frederik Hendrik owned 12 paintings by him, the largest number by a single artist. His most important patron was fellow townsman Willem Vincent, Baron van Wyttenhorst, for whom he painted at least 55 cabinet pieces.
Van Poelenburch is considered to be one of the first Italianate painters and his work had a profound influence on the generation that came after him. Throughout his career he painted cabinet pieces of Italianate landscapes with mythological or religious subjects, or populated with pastoral figures and bathers. Almost exclusively on copper or panel, their painted surfaces have a porcelain smoothness. Several portraits by his hand are known, also in a small format. On several occasions Van Poelenburch painted the figures in the work of other artists, such as Alexander Keirincx, Jan Both, Bartholomeus van Bassen, Dirck van Delen and Hendrik Steenwijck II.
Houbraken is the first to record Van Poelenburch’s pupils: Dirck van der Lisse (1607-69), Daniel Vertangen (1598-1681/84), Johan van Haensbergen (1642-1705), Toussaint Gelton (c. 1630-80), François Verwilt (c. 1620-91), Warnard van Rysen (c. 1625-after 1665) and the otherwise unknown Willem van Steenree. Their work is often so close to that of their master that it is hard to tell apart, particularly when signed with Van Poelenburch’s monogram. Jan Gerritsz van Bronckhorst (c. 1603-61) made a number of prints after Van Poelenburch’s designs.
Taco Dibbits, 2007
References
De Bie 1661, pp. 256-57; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), p. 175; Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 128-30; Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, pp. 25-36, 249-58 (documents); Bok 1985; Chong 1987, pp. 3-14; Schatborn in Amsterdam 2001, pp. 57-65; Boers 2004 (with transcribed inventory of the collection of Willem Vincent, Baron van Wyttenhorst)
Entry
After his return from Italy in c. 1627 until his death 40 years later Van Poelenburch produced an enormous number of cabinet pieces depicting archaic landscapes with figures bathing. Only few have specific subjects, such as Diana and her Nymphs Spied upon by Actaeon,8 or Landscape with the Discovery of Callisto’s Pregnancy.9 Although the present picture does not appear to depict a specific event from classical mythology, the bow and quiver in the right foreground leave no doubt that the nymphs belong to Diana’s band, even though the hunting goddess herself does not appear to be present. Alarmed by the peeping satyrs on the left, the nude nymphs flee to the old servant sitting by their clothes on the right. This frivolous theme of chastity confronted by lust is not dissimilar to that of the etching by Van Bronckhorst after Van Poelenburch of a single Nymph Surprised by a Satyr.10
After the initial years in Rome, the colours of Van Poelenburch’s paintings become more subdued and the figures heavier and bloated with indistinctly defined joints. From then on there is little stylistic development, so it is therefore difficult to establish a chronology within this large group, also because there is only one dated landscape, of 1659.11 The figures in Satyrs Peeping at Nymphs are characteristic of those Van Poelenburch painted for the rest of his career after his return to Utrecht. However, the crisp colours and the highly defined landscape still recall his Italian works, which might be an indication that it was painted not too long after his return in c. 1627.
Burton Fredericksen identified the picture with which Satyrs Peeping at Nymphs was sold at the Blondel de Gagny sale in 177612 as Diana and Attendants in a Landscape with Spoils of the Hunt.13 As he pointed out, both also fit the detailed description in the catalogue of the Tolozan sale in 1801, where they appear again, this time as consecutive lots.14 Notwithstanding their similar size and subject and their shared 18th-century provenance, it is unlikely that the artist conceived these two pictures as pendants.15 Their compositions do not pair them easily, as they both have a repoussoir on the left and a view to the horizon on the right, and their figures differ slightly in size.
Taco Dibbits, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 241.
Literature
Sluijter-Seijffert 1984, pp. 95-96, 236, no. 108
Collection catalogues
1809, p. 54, no. 234; 1843, p. 46, no. 241 (‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 22, no. 214 (fl. 1,000); 1858, p. 108, no. 241; 1880, p. 245, no. 274; 1887, p. 133, no. 1121; 1903, p. 211, no. 1894; 1934, p. 225, no. 1894; 1960, p. 244, no. 1894; 1976, p. 448, no. A 313; 2007, no. 241
Citation
T. Dibbits, 2007, 'Cornelis van Poelenburch, Satyrs Peeping at Nymphs, after 1627', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5065
(accessed 26 December 2024 15:08:24).