Object data
oil on panel
support: height 40 cm × width 53 cm
outer size: depth 7.3 cm (support incl. frame)
Pieter Symonsz Potter
A Musical Company in an Interior
1630
Inscriptions
- signature and date, bottom right: P.Potter ƒ. Aº 1630
Technical notes
The support is a single, horizontally grained oak panel bevelled on all sides. The ground layer is transparent and yellowish. The paint layers were applied smoothly, with an extensive use of impasto for the figures. There is a pentimento in the hand of the woman playing the lute.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 1 February 2005
Condition
Good. The varnish is discoloured.
Provenance
...; donated to the museum by Mr and Mrs D.A.J. Kessler-Hülsmann, Kapelle op den Bosch, near Mechelen, 1940
Object number: SK-A-3338
Credit line: Gift of Mr and Mrs Kessler-Hülsmann, Kapelle op den Bosch
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Pieter Symonsz Potter (Enkhuizen c. 1597/1600 - Amsterdam 1652)
Pieter Symonsz Potter must have been born around 1597/1600, but the documentary evidence for this is contradictory. He first lived in Enkhuizen, where on 18 September 1622 he married Aechtje, the sister of the painter Willem Bartsius. He trained as a glass-painter. Potter lived in Leiden from 1628 to 1631, and it was there that he began to paint. In 1631 he moved to Amsterdam, where he was living in St Anthonisbreestraat around 1635, not far from the house of his colleague Pieter Codde. He was in The Hague from 1646 to 1649, when he returned to Amsterdam, where he was buried on 4 October 1652.
Pieter Potter was a versatile artist, producing genre scenes, landscapes, still lifes and history paintings. In the late 1630s he was also active as a gilt-leather painter. In Leiden he was influenced by David Bailly and Jan Davidsz de Heem, both in his style and his subject matter. Potter’s guardroom scenes from the 1630s resemble Codde’s and those of Willem Cornelisz Duyster, who also lived in Amsterdam. Interestingly, Potter had an affair with Codde’s wife, Marritje Aerents, around 1640, while his own wife Aechtje was still alive. He was also the father and probably the first teacher of the animal painter Paulus Potter (1625-54).
Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007
References
Houbraken II, 1719, pp. 125-26; Dozy 1884, p. 61; Bredius 1893, pp. 34-46; Von Wurzbach II, 1910, pp. 354-55; Juynboll in Thieme/Becker XXVII, 1933, pp. 307-08; Walsh 1985, pp. 17-35
Entry
Scenes of men and women playing music were often associated with harmonious love in the 17th century. That may be the case here, despite the fact that the figures are not looking at each other but seem to be staring into the distance, lost in their own thoughts. Standing on the bare floor in the centre of the main group is a glass of wine, but nobody seems to want a drink. Perhaps the artist was drawing attention to the temptation inherent in the combination of alcohol, music and earthly love.
The overmantel painting in the right background shows a ship on a calm sea, and may be a visual commentary on the conversation of the couple under the mantelpiece or on the lyrics of the company’s song.1 A ship sailing across gentle waves was often associated with love in smooth waters. There are several 17th-century works in which a painting within the painting shows a ship at sea. Although there are numerous mentions of paintings of ships in 17th-century estate inventories (like maps, they were very common luxury goods), it is not impossible that the painting shown in this interior contains a clue to the meaning of the scene.2 This particular work is too worn to make out what is depicted on the map on the wall.
The painting is dated 1630, when Potter was living in Leiden. The work of Jan Davidsz de Heem, who was active in Leiden at the time, may have been a source of inspiration, but Pieter Codde and Willem Duyster of Amsterdam could have exerted some influence, as could Dirck Hals in Haarlem.3 The man on the far left of Potter’s painting, who is shown from behind seated entirely in the shadows, serves as a repoussoir. Similar figures are found in Duyster’s oeuvre, such as his Soldiers beside a Fireplace.4 Potter’s work is clearly inferior to those by Codde and Duyster. The figures are not very convincing, and the palette is sober in the extreme, being dominated by brown and yellow.5
Everhard Korthals Altes, 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. 248.
Literature
Amsterdam 1976, pp. 210-11, no. 53
Collection catalogues
1976, p. 455, no. A3338; 2007, no. 248
Citation
E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Pieter Symonsz. Potter, A Musical Company in an Interior, 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5097
(accessed 22 November 2024 23:50:00).