Object data
oil on panel
support: height 42 cm × width 63 cm
frame: height 58.2 cm × width 78.3 cm
sight size: height 41.5 cm × width 61.5 cm
Willem Cornelisz Duyster (copy after)
The Musical Gathering
after 1700
Technical notes
The support is a horizontally grained oak plank with a vertically grained strip of 1.7 cm added on the left. Losses under the paint layers reveal that the plank had been used before, possibly for a piece of furniture. It is bevelled on all sides and has been cradled. A white ground was applied over a greenish ground layer. Some underdrawing is visible in the figures. The paint was applied very smoothly.
Scientific examination and reports
- X-radiography: RMA, 1983
- technical report: L. Sozzani, RMA, 23 August 2004
Condition
Fair. There are two old horizontal cracks in the panel, and the varnish has yellowed slightly.
Conservation
- C. Naud, 1981 - 1982: treatment unknown
- H.C. Coen, 1981 - 1982: treatment unknown
Provenance
...; from J.F. Laisney, Paris, fl. 750, as Johann Liss, to the museum, May 1887;1 on loan to the Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, Muiden, 1922-80, and again since 1985
Object number: SK-A-1403
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Willem Cornelisz Duyster (Amsterdam 1599 - Amsterdam 1635)
Willem Cornelis Duyster, the son of a carpenter, was baptized in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 30 August 1599. His surname is derived from the house ‘De Duystere Werelt’ (The dark world), in which he and his family lived from 1620 onwards. His teacher is unknown. It has been speculated that he studied with the portrait painter Cornelis van der Voort or with Barend van Someren. The suggestion that Pieter Codde was his teacher was based on the misinterpretation of a document from 1625 that reveals that Duyster and Codde had a quarrel at Meerhuysen, a country house rented by Van Someren. Duyster was also well-acquainted with the guardroom painter Simon Kick. Duyster and Kick married each other’s sisters in a double wedding on 5 September 1631, and both couples lived in ‘De Duystere Werelt’. Duyster died of the plague at the age of 35. He was buried in the Zuiderkerk on 31 January 1635.
His oeuvre consists of merry companies, guardroom scenes and portraits, close in style to those by Pieter Codde. Few of Duyster’s paintings are dated. Philips Angel praised his skill at painting fabrics in 1642.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Angel 1642, p. 55; Houbraken II, 1719, p. 145; Bredius 1888a; Playter 1972, I, pp. 1-14, 23-35; Beaujean in Saur XXXI, 2002, pp. 343-44
Entry
There are vague traces of an inscription on the horizontal piece of wood between the legs of the chair in the centre. According to old collection catalogues it originally read: ‘J. Lijs 1625’, but that had already disappeared when the painting was restored in 1981.2 It is possible that it was thought to be false during some previous treatment and removed. Johann Liss, who worked in Italy from 1621 until his death in 1629, was certainly not the artist.
Hofstede de Groot had published this painting back in 1901 as a copy after a work by Willem Cornelisz Duyster that was then in the Lenglart collection in Lille.3 That painting, a typical Duyster, was on the art market in 2003.4 Another version was auctioned in 1977 with an attribution to Dirck Hals.5
The popularity of this work is also demonstrated by the existence of several partial copies, three of which show the two figures on the left,6 one of the woman with the songbook,7 and one with just the lutenist.8 In Lille there is a drawing of 1787 by Jean-Baptiste Wicar in which the entire scene is copied.9
The copy in the Rijksmuseum was also made long after Duyster’s death, probably in the 18th or 19th century. The fact that the copyist worked on an old panel that had been used before suggests that it was intended to pass this work off as a genuine 17th-century piece.10
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. 68.
Literature
Hofstede de Groot 1901, pp. 135-36; coll. cat. Muiden 1989, no. 14 (as manner of Duyster)
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 105, no. 879a (as Johann Liss); 1903, p. 91, no. 852; 1976, p. 351, no. A 1403 (as Johann Liss); 1992, p. 50, no. 1403; 2007, no. 68
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'copy after Willem Cornelisz. Duyster, The Musical Gathering, after 1700', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8920
(accessed 22 November 2024 21:20:42).