An Old Woman Selling Eggs

1632

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 76.5 cm × width 58 cm × thickness 4 cm (support incl. protective backboard)
outer size: depth 11.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower left (H and B ligated): HBloemaert.1632.

Technical notes

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. The tacking edges have been preserved at the top and bottom and on the left. Cusping is clearly visible on the left and vaguely on all other sides. A coarse, plain-weave canvas insert measuring approx. 13 x 25 cm can be seen at lower right. Microscopy and cross-sections indicate that this insert is probably original. At the top and bottom and on the right the picture plane is folded over the current stretcher, reducing the original height of the composition by approx. 2 cm and the width by approx. 1 cm.
Preparatory layers The single, white, translucent ground extends up to the current right edge of the support and almost up to the original top, bottom and left tacking edges. It consists of lead white with a minute addition of black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current right edge of the support and almost up to the original top, bottom and left tacking edges. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, with a careful blending of strokes. The figure, the egg in the hand and the basket were reserved in the initial layer of the background. A grey and transparent brown underpainting (the grey is evident under the scarf and the brown below the face and hands) serves for shadows. The egg in the hand was applied wet in wet with the last paint layer of the two fingertips. The white cuff of the figure’s right sleeve was added wet in wet with the final flesh layer, followed upon drying by the red cuff and in turn by the light blue edge of the cuff of the woman’s overgarment. The final background layer was applied wet in wet with the headscarf. Paint samples taken from just above and in the canvas insert reveal that the blue cloth consists of three layers: the first being a blue-grey containing blue, black, red and white pigment particles, followed by a more turquoise blue layer composed of similar pigment particles, and then by a thin grey one with fine black pigment particles.
Gwen Tauber, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, nos. SK-C-106/1-2, 29 August 2008
infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 29 August 2008
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 29 August 2008

Condition

Fair. The canvas is torn around the perimeter of the current stretcher. Two old, restored tears are visible to the left and right of the hand holding the basket. Moating caused by lining can be seen on all sides.

Conservation

H.H. Mertens, 1969: treatment unknown

Provenance

…; collection Boelen van Hensbroek;¹…; from the dealer Roos, fl. 110, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, 1834;² by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;³ from which on loan to the museum since 30 June 1885⁴

Object number: SK-C-106

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

The artist

Hendrick Bloemaert (Utrecht 1601/02 - Utrecht 1672)

It emerges from an annuity bought for Hendrick Bloemaert in 1610 that he was born in Utrecht in 1601 or 1602 as the eldest son of the Catholic artist Abraham Bloemaert and Gerarda de Roij. Hendrick trained with his father, as reported by Houbraken. That apprenticeship, though, is not recorded in the guild books, but there was no obligation for the sons of members to pay registration fees. Bloemaert was in Rome on 27 February 1627, where he witnessed the foundation of a Norbertine convent by the Utrecht priest Johannes Honorius van Axel de Seny. It is not known how long he stayed in Italy, but he was back in Utrecht in 1631, for on 1 October he married Margareta van der Eem, the daughter of Cornelis van der Eem, a Catholic lawyer.

Bloemaert enlisted as an independent master with Utrecht’s Guild of St Luke on some date between 25 January 1630 and 25 January 1633. He was elected dean in 1643, and it was in that capacity that he was probably jointly responsible in February of that year for the grant of an ordinance formalizing the independence of the painters, who had parted company with the sculptors and woodcarvers in 1639. The prominent role that Bloemaert played in the affairs of the Utrecht painters is reflected in his re-election to the guild’s board in 1655 and 1656, and then annually from 1659 to 1664.

Bloemaert never knew financial adversity, and invested his wealth in houses and land. He was also a published writer, first of poetry and then, in 1650, of his translation of Battista Guarini’s pastoral play Il pastor fido (Den getrouwen herder). It is preceded by an ode in which Joost van den Vondel sang the praises of his literary work and his painting. In 1670 Bloemaert’s translation of L’Annibale in Capua by N. Beregan or Berengani was issued (Hannibal den manhaften veld-overste triomferende in de stadt Capua). He was buried in Utrecht’s Jacobikerk on 30 December 1672, at the end of the Dutch ‘year of disasters’. The fact that he was the only member of the Bloemaert dynasty to be given a Catholic funeral was due to the French occupation of the country, which created a brief opportunity for Catholics to profess their faith openly.

Bloemaert’s earliest dated pictures, St Jerome and St John the Baptist, are from 1624.⁵ Initially he focused on single-figured genre scenes related to the repertoire of the Utrecht Caravaggisti and his father. In the mid-1630s the accent shifted towards portraiture and more Classicist mythological and religious subjects that can be associated with work by artists like Gerard van Honthorst, Jan van Bijlert and Jan van Bronckhorst. A few later altarpieces were probably made for Catholic patrons in Utrecht and Amersfoort. In contrast to his father, his activities were mainly local and regional. There are no known major commissions from Flanders. Bloemaert’s last dated painting is the Portrait of Joannes Putkamer on his Deathbed of 1671.⁶

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022

References
J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), p. 165; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, p. 44; S. Muller, Schilders-vereenigingen te Utrecht: Bescheiden uit het Gemeente-Archief, Utrecht 1880, pp. 120, 128-31, 134; Moes in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, IV, Leipzig 1910, pp. 127-28; Bok in A. Blankert and L.J. Slatkes (eds.), Nieuw licht op de Gouden Eeuw: Hendrick ter Brugghen en zijn tijdgenoten, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1986-87, pp. 218-19; Bok in M.G. Roethlisberger and M.J. Bok, Abraham Bloemaert and his Sons: Paintings and Prints, I, Doornspijk 1993, pp. 588-607 (documents); Seelig in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XI, Munich/Leipzig 1995, pp. 550-51; G. Seelig, Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651): Studien zur Utrechter Malerei um 1620, Berlin 1997, pp. 270-74, 308-09

Entry

In the period between roughly 1625 and 1635 Hendrick Bloemaert made a series of single-figured paintings that are closely related in both subject and form to the genre scenes that his father and probable teacher Abraham Bloemaert made in the second half of the 1620s.⁷ The head of this old woman is also very similar to a general type that the latter used repeatedly.⁸ Hendrick would also have known the half-lengths filling the picture surface by other Utrecht masters like Gerard van Honthorst, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Jan van Bijlert. This painting of 1632 is a typical example of the influence of those artists’ Caravaggist works and of the lack of originality in Bloemaert’s early oeuvre.

Cornelis Bloemaert made an engraving after an Old Man with a Hen by his brother Hendrick in which the inscription ‘Siet hoe den ouden voelt het hoen, / Een droge Queen wil oock wat doen’ (See the old man feeling the hen, a dry old crone also likes a bit) makes it abundantly clear that a figure of that kind had an explicitly erotic connotation.⁹ There is no inscribed print after the Rijksmuseum painting, as far as is known, but the old woman should probably not be seen simply as a market stallholder vending her wares. An erotic interpretation can be deduced from the fact that eggs are generally regarded as aids to virility.¹⁰ Offering one can be construed as a sexual invitation when seen in the light of the negative, stereotype image of a lascivious old woman.¹¹ The contrast between the egg’s smooth surface and the crone’s wrinkled face can also allude to the difference between youth and old age and thus to the idea of the fleeting nature of life - an association that is often made in depictions of the elderly.¹²

It has been suggested that the Amsterdam picture has a companion piece in Poulterer with Fur Hat in Stockholm,¹³ with the woman teasing the man for his impotence.¹⁴ Pairs of that kind are known from archival sources, such as Joachim Wtewael’s inventory, which lists ‘a woman selling eggs and a hen-squeezer’.¹⁵ Roethlisberger, though, has rejected this pendant hypothesis.¹⁶ Quite apart from the fact that the precise action is difficult to define, there is no interplay between the figures that would suggest a connection in subject matter. In addition, the inscription on the print after Bloemaert cited above shows that no companion piece was needed for there to be an erotic intent. Furthermore, the Amsterdam picture has been trimmed on the right.¹⁷ It probably included the woman’s entire left elbow originally, and was thus wider than the one in Stockholm, the dimensions of which (76 x 60 cm) have not been altered.¹⁸

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J. Bruyn, ‘Jung und alt: Ikonographische Bemerkungen zur “tronie”’, in R. Klessmann, Hendrick ter Brugghen und die Nachfolger Caravaggios in Holland: Beiträge eines Symposions aus Anlass der Ausstellung ‘Holländische Malerei in neuem Licht: Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine Zeitgenossen’ im Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, vom 23. bis 25. März 1987, Braunschweig 1988, pp. 67-76, esp. p. 70; Döring in U. Berger and J. Dessel (eds.), Bilder vom alten Menschen in der niederländischen und deutschen Kunst 1550-1750, exh. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1993-94, pp. 184-86, no. 50; M.G. Roethlisberger and M.J. Bok, Abraham Bloemaert and his Sons: Paintings and Prints, I, Doornspijk 1993, p. 460, no. H 37

Collection catalogues

1885, p. 90, no. 19; 1887, p. 16, no. 126; 1903, p. 52, no. 527; 1934, p. 51, no. 527; 1960, p. 43, no. 527; 1976, p. 120, no. C 106

Citation

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022, 'Hendrick Bloemaert, An Old Woman Selling Eggs, 1632', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6074

(accessed 23 November 2024 10:20:53).