Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 68 cm × width 51.6 cm
outer size: depth 7.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Jacob Duck
Soldiers in a Stable
c. 1655
Technical notes
The support is a plain-weave canvas and has been lined. Cusping is visible along the top, bottom and left edges. The ground appears to be dark red. No underdrawing could be detected with infrared reflectography. The paint was applied thinly and smoothly.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: A. Wallert, RMA, 12 August 2004
Condition
Good.
Conservation
- W.A. Hopman, 1874: canvas lined
- H. Heijdenrijk, 1913: canvas relined
Provenance
...; ? collection Hendrik van Heteren (1672-1749), The Hague;1 his son, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague (‘Eenige Ruiters in haar Logement, met Vrouwen, Paarden, en bywerk, door Johan le Ducq. h. 26 d., br. 19½ d. D. [68 x 51 cm]’);2 his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam (‘Jean le Duc. Tableau capital representant des officiers et des chevaux en repos avec plusieurs accessoires (toile, h. 26 l. 19½) [68 x 51 cm]’.);3 from whom, fl. 100,000, to the museum with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), by decree of Louis Napoleon King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809;4 on loan to the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, February 1924-March 1942
Object number: SK-A-93
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Jacob Duck (Utrecht c. 1600 - Utrecht 1667)
Jacob Duck who signed A., J.A. or J. Duck, was born in Utrecht. A document of 1660 in which he states that he was about 60 years of age establishes his date of birth as c. 1600. He initially trained as a goldsmith. His parents placed him as an apprentice in 1611, and eight years later he became a master in the goldsmiths’ guild. He married Rijckgen Croock in 1620. In 1621, he was listed among the pupils of the Utrecht painter Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot and other painters, and in the same year he is recorded as a ‘conterfeyt jongen’(apprentice portraitist) in the archives of the Utrecht painters’ guild. In 1629, he gave a painting of a musical company to the St Jobsgasthuis in Utrecht, and in 1630-33, he was listed as a master in the city’s Guild of St Luke. He evidently did not abandon his first profession, for he was still being listed as a member of the goldsmiths’ guild in 1642. As some of Duck’s paintings were offered in a lottery sponsored by the Haarlem guild in 1636, it was thought that he lived in Haarlem for a while. However, he is documented in Utrecht in 1636 and 1637, and appears to have been in his native city throughout the 1630s and 1640s. He may have been in The Hague around 1660, for there is a record of a painter there with the same name. He died in Utrecht on or just before 21 January 1667, and was buried on 28 January in the Convent of St Mary Magdalen.
Duck painted small-scale genre scenes, mainly merry companies, brothels and guardrooms. Only a few of his genre scenes are known to be dated. His earliest dated painting is from 1628. Portraits by Duck are rare. In 1644 he collaborated with Cornelis van Poelenburch, Bartholomeus van der Helst and Jan Both on a painting with a portrait of Willem Vincent, Baron van Wyttenhorst.5 His early paintings are stylistically related to the work of the Amsterdam painter Pieter Codde, whose Dancing Lesson of 1627 appears in the background of one of Duck’s merry companies.6 In addition to his paintings, Duck made several etchings. In the 18th and 19th centuries, he was confused with the Hague cattle painter Johan le Ducq.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Bredius 1882, pp. 290-92; Lilienfeld in Thieme/Becker X, 1914, p. 40; Béguin 1952; Bok in San Francisco etc. 1997, pp. 381-82; Beaujean in Saur XXX, 2001, pp. 207-08; Rosen 2003, pp. 49-57
Entry
Although Duck could occasionally come up with some surprisingly original subjects, he could milk other ones for all they were worth, and had no scruples about repeating figures and motifs literally. This painting is a fine example of that. The stable, the man bending forwards by the horse, the seated man pulling on his boot and the man standing behind him are found in larger, horizontal scenes in St Petersburg7 and Louisville (fig. a).8 The painting in St Petersburg also has the standing officer with the tilted hat in the foreground. The dog occurs in all three works in the same pose, although not always in the same position.
A comparison of tracings of the main contour lines in the Amsterdam painting and the related one in Louisville shows that Duck must have used drawings to transfer his figures.9 The contours of several figures, such as the horse and the man seen from behind in the background, match almost exactly in both paintings. The differences between the contours of other figures which appear to be identical at first sight, such as the seated man pulling on his boot and the man standing on the right, were caused by shifting the drawing, deliberately or otherwise, during the transfer process.
The combination of the sleeping woman, the man pulling on his boot, the standing officer and the man in the right background, who are looking pointedly out at the viewer, makes this a puzzling painting. Duck’s guardrooms often have unmistakably moralistic or sexual implications, or both, sometimes wrapped up in a joke, but the lack of explicit references leaves the meaning of this one unclear.
Like the works in St Petersburg and Louisville, the Amsterdam stable interior is undated. It is assumed that Duck’s paintings with an upright format are from late in his career.10 Using a stable as the setting for his guardroom scenes is also a feature of his late work.11 Rosen has dated this painting 1650-55.12 The stylistic similarities to Duck’s only dated work with an upright format, the interior of an inn with soldiers of 165513 argue for a dating around the middle of the 1650s.
Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 62.
Literature
Descamps III, 1760, p. 34 (as Johan le Ducq); Salomon 1998, p. 162, no. 90; Rosen 2003, catalogue raisonné, pp. 45-46, no. 94, with earlier literature
Collection catalogues
1809, p. 19, no. 78 (as Johan le Ducq); 1843, p. 17, no. 75 (as Johan le Ducq; ‘in good condition’); 1853, p. 9, no. 71 (as Johan le Ducq; fl. 800); 1858, pp. 32-33, no. 71 (as Johan le Ducq); 1876, p. 48, no. 93 (as Johan le Ducq); 1880, p. 89, no. 79 (as Johan le Ducq); 1887, p. 38, no. 294; 1903, p. 87, no. 821; 1976, p. 203, no. A 93; 2007, no. 62
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Jacob Duck, Soldiers in a Stable, c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8340
(accessed 10 November 2024 17:35:48).