A Couple in an Interior

1672

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 23 cm × width 19.3 cm
outer size: depth 4 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, bottom centre, on the edge of the table: Av ostade 1672

Technical notes

Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 0.7 cm thick. Wooden strips (approx. 0.5-0.8 cm) were added on all sides at a later date. The reverse has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1643. The panel could have been ready for use by 1652, but a date in or after 1662 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground does not extend over the edges of the support. The first, pinkish layer contains large white and some smaller red and orange pigment particles. The second ground is a light brownish grey and consists of large white and black pigment particles with an addition of small red and ochre-coloured pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint does not extend over the edges of the support. The composition was built up from dark to light, holding the figures in reserve. The woman’s red sleeve was executed over her brown jacket, and the greyish-brown turned cuff was then painted over the sleeve. The darkest grey of the background was applied first, followed by the lighter grey on the left, partially extending over it. On the right the dark grey was covered by a lighter grey, with a reserve for the window; the darker paint has remained visible in the latter’s wooden parts. The view was added last. At some stage the man’s black hat was moved slightly to the right. The paint surface is smooth, with hardly any visible brushstrokes.
Anna Krekeler, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 12 June 2008
paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-C-201/1-2, 12 June 2008
technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 12 June 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 28 January 2011

Condition

Fair. The paint layer has several small losses and some discoloured retouching. The thick varnish is uneven and has yellowed severely, and shows some matte spots; a long diagonal scratch runs through the male figure.

Provenance

...; sale, Jonkheer Johan Goll van Franckenstein Jr (1756-1821, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 1 July 1833 sqq., no. 58 (‘hoog 2 p. 1 d. breed 1 p. 9 d. [21 x 19 cm] Paneel. Aan eene ten halve gedekte tafel zit eene Boerin, houdende een ten halve gevulde kelk in de handen, nevens haar een boer met eene bierkan, welke haar schijnt toe te spreken of naar haar te verkeeren; [...].’), fl. 515, to Jeronimo de Vries, for Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam;¹ by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;² on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885³

Object number: SK-C-201

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

The artist

Adriaen van Ostade (Haarlem 1610 - Haarlem 1685)

Adriaen van Ostade was the fifth child of the weaver Jan Hendricx van Ostade and Janneke Hendricx. He was baptized in the Reformed Church in Haarlem on 19 December 1610. According to Houbraken, whose information may not be reliable, he was a pupil of Frans Hals at the same time as Adriaen Brouwer. While Hals left no discernable imprint on his oeuvre, the influence of Brouwer, who lived in Haarlem from 1623/24 to 1631/32, is very apparent in Van Ostade’s early work. His activity as an artist is documented only in 1632, when he had already reached the age of 22. Peasants Playing Cards from a year later is Van Ostade’s earliest signed and dated picture.⁴ He first appears on the Guild of St Luke’s contribution list in 1634. On 30 March 1640, in settlement of a debt to Salomon van Ruysdael, the Court of Petty Sessions ordered him to pay three days’ worth of board at a guilder a day and to spend five hours producing a painting with a value of seven guilders. It is not known whether Adriaen van Ostade himself had lived in Van Ruysdael’s house and received instruction from him.

Van Ostade married twice, first to Machteltje Pietersdr, who was a Catholic, so he probably converted to her religion at the time of their wedding in 1638. Fifteen years after Machteltje’s death in 1642, Anna Ingels became his wife, a scion of a prominent Amsterdam Catholic family. The painter spent his entire life in his native city and appears to have been relatively well-off. In 1647 and 1662, he served as warden of the Guild of St Luke, and in 1662-63 as dean. From 1633 to 1669 he was a member of the third platoon of the second company of the St George Civic Guard. Living to the age of 74, Van Ostade had a long and productive career. He was interred in the family grave in the Grote Kerk in Haarlem on 2 May 1685.

Several hundred paintings by Adriaen van Ostade have survived, mostly depictions of peasant life but also a few landscapes, biblical scenes and portraits. More than 400 drawings, including over 50 detailed watercolours executed in the period 1672-84, have been preserved. A renowned printmaker in his own day, 50 of his etchings have come down to us. The Haarlem landscape artist Evert Adriaensz Oudendijck is recorded as his apprentice in 1663. According to Houbraken, Van Ostade’s younger brother Isack (1621-1649) was also his pupil, as were Jan Steen (1626-1679), Cornelis Bega (c. 1631-1664), Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705) and Cornelis Dusart (1660-1704). Van Gool also mentions that Willem Doudyns (1630-1697) trained with him.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, p. 258; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 347-49; J. van Gool, De nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen: Waer in de levens- en kunstbedryven er tans levende en reets overleedene schilders, die van Houbraken, noch eenig ander schryver, zyn aengeteekend, verhaelt worden, I, The Hague 1750, p. 359; 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. 170-74; Fritz in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXVI, Leipzig 1932, pp. 74-75; A. Bredius, ‘Een en ander over Adriaen van Ostade’, Oud Holland 56 (1939), pp. 241-47; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, passim; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, I, Hamburg 1981, pp. 28-33, 36-47; Schnackenburg in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XXIII, New York 1996, pp. 609-12; 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. 258-60; A. Ebert, Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, pp. 19-22; Seelig in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XCIII, Munich/Leipzig 2017, pp. 528-30

Entry

The subject of a few peasants drinking, smoking and chatting was a favourite of Adriaen van Ostade’s. Often men feature in these scenes, but sometimes they also include members of the opposite sex, as in the present painting of 1672. The artist had used the composition of two half-length figures, the woman shown in profile, the man frontally, almost 20 years earlier, in 1653.⁵ As in that work, this amorous couple are well beyond the first bloom of youth. They were probably based on drawings in Van Ostade’s studio stock. The man, for example, appears in a number of slightly earlier pictures of his; the pose and downward glance are especially close to the drinker in a painting of 1666 in Montpellier.⁶

In addition to the standard accoutrements in such scenes of flirting couples – the tankard, wine glass and pipe – a waffle has been included on the table. This unusual item also occurs in another painting with a courting pair by Van Ostade, probably from around the same time.⁷ It may be a play on words, for ‘waffle’ in Dutch is wafel and is similar to waffel (mouth or snout), waffelen (to chat or babble) and waffelaar (waffler).

Probably because of the skewed perspective and summary execution of the background, one scholar felt that the Rijksmuseum work had been painted over by a later, less capable hand.⁸ Although the technical examination provided no evidence of tampering with that part of the composition, one has to conclude that the picture as a whole is a rather perfunctory performance and agree with the assessment Théophile Thoré made when he saw it hanging on a wall in the Van der Hoop collection: ‘A second Adriaen van Ostade, Interior with Two Figures, was hung very high up and looks unimportant’.⁹

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, IX, London 1842, p. 81, no. 7 (as dated 1642), p. 115, no. 119; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, III, Esslingen/Paris 1910, p. 232, no. 287

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 128, no. 1076 (as dated 1642); 1903, p. 202, no. 1819; 1934, p. 216, no. 1819; 1976, p. 430, no. C 201

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Adriaen van Ostade, A Couple in an Interior, 1672', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4903

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