Object data
oil on panel
support: height 59.6 cm × width 83.6 cm
Pieter de Bloot
Country Kermis
1639
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower left: P. De. Bloot / 1639
Technical notes
Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 27.8 and 31.8 cm), approx. 0.7 cm thick at the top and bottom, and approx. 1.4 cm at half height. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, light yellow ground extends over the edges of the support. It consists of off-white pigment particles with a minute addition of earth pigments.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed cursive lines resembling the letters ‘G’ or ‘Cj’ to the right of the head of the child in the foreground. They seem to have no bearing on the final painting.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support. The initial lay-in consists of a semi-transparent brownish layer that creates dark and light areas, and was left partially exposed in the foreground and in the figures on the left. Infrared photography revealed some fluid lines and washes of paint between the house on the left and the two figures to its right. These lines and forms remain unexplained, but might indicate that the woman and he boy were intended slightly further to the left in the undermodelling phase, or that more figures were initially planned but not executed. The composition was built up from dark to light, with the brighter paints being more opaque and more thickly applied. The houses and large figures were all reserved in the background, except for the child in the foreground. He, and his face in particular, was executed with rather smooth, blended brushstrokes which contrast with the firmer and separate strokes in the other figures. Detail was created with small, rather stiff brushstrokes and dabs of paint, enhancing contours and further delineating forms. The paint layers are fairly smooth, with some brushmarking in the sky and slight impasto in highlights.
Ige Verslype, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 5 August 2009
- paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-1468/1-2, 5 August 2009
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 5 August 2009
- infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 4 September 2009
Condition
Fair. There is a small dent in the paint and support in the small trees in the right background. The blues in the clothing of the figures around the table on the left show a greyish haze. The crack pattern is overall fine, but is slightly coarser in the child in the foreground.
Conservation
- M. Bisschof, RCE, April 2008: retouchings adjusted; revarnished
Provenance
…; from Anthony Engelbert André de la Porte (1832-1898), Arnhem, fl. 500, to the museum, 1888;1 on loan to the Provinciehuis, Utrecht, 1936-53; on loan through the DRVK since 1953; on loan to the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 1982; on loan to the Historisch Museum, Rotterdam, 1986-2008; on loan to the Stadsmuseum, IJsselstein, since 2008
Object number: SK-A-1468
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Pieter de Bloot (Rotterdam c. 1601 - Rotterdam 1658)
On 24 September 1640 Pieter de Bloot stated that his age was 38, while a deed of 10 May 1650 records that he was about 49. Since his parents married in Rotterdam on 31 January 1601 it can be taken that he was born in the closing months of that year at the earliest. He was given the same name as his father, a draper, who like his mother Anneke Jacobs came from Antwerp. Josijntje, a daughter from an earlier marriage of Pieter Sr, would later become the wife of the framemaker Pieter Jansz Molijn.
In 1624 Pieter de Bloot married Anneke Frans, the widow of Allart Jansz in Rotterdam. She died, however, within a year, and barely two months later his wedding to Grietje Hubertsdr took place in the town hall, from which it can be deduced that she was not a member of the Reformed Church. That union, too, was short-lived, and in 1630 Maria Govertsdr Vogel became his wife. She was a Remonstrant born in Schoonhoven and was the widow of Pieter Cornelisz Stolwijck. It was a good match from De Bloot’s point of view, because Maria was wealthier than he was. In 1646 he even bought a tiling works, which he ran himself, for in this period he is regularly referred to as a painter and tiler. Although it was not a very profitable investment, he did leave a sizable fortune on his death in 1658. De Bloot was buried in Rotterdam in the week of 9-16 November.
De Bloot specialized in landscapes in the manner of Jan van Goyen and in peasant pieces set both indoors and outside. His repertoire also includes village kermises and the occasional biblical subject. His earliest dated painting, a festive group of peasants, is from 1625, and his last one, of 1656, is a scene around the arched stone bridge of an orphanage or monastery.2 De Bloot’s output was highly prized during his lifetime. The Utrecht artist Cornelis Saftleven I already had three of his pictures by 1627, and another one listed in the probate inventory of Jan Miense Molenaer of Haarlem had one of the highest valuations at 48 guilders. Adriaen Lucasz Fonteyn (c. 1606-1661) and François Ryckhals (1609-1647) were probably his pupils.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
References
Scheffer in F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], III, Rotterdam 1880-81, pp. 568-71; ibid., V, 1882-83, p. 118; ibid. VII, 1888-90, p. 304; P. Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, ‘Pieter de Bloot’, Oud Holland 9 (1891), pp. 62-68; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, p. 118; Haverkorn van Rijsewijk in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, IV, Leipzig 1910, p. 138; A.J.C. Hoynck van Papendrecht, De Rotterdamsche plateel- en tegelbakkers en hun product, 1590-1851, Rotterdam 1920, pp. 193-96, 283-84, 292-93; Blok in P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, IX, Leiden 1933, cols. 72-73; Van der Zeeuw in N.I. Schadee (ed.), Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Historisch Museum) 1994, p. 262; Wegener in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XI, Munich/Leipzig 1995, pp. 601-02; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, p. 300
Entry
Pieter de Bloot had already painted several country kermises before making this picture in 1639. It was the subject of his earliest dated work in 1625, and of another in 1628.3 Those two were still firmly in the tradition of Brueghel, as was a similar scene of 1632.4
In the 1640s his village kermises with their tonal landscape backgrounds and depiction of buildings came closer to the tradition of Jan van Goyen.5 The present painting is a transitional work. De Bloot has abandoned the Brueghelian manner of composition and of the characterization of the figures. The style is smoother and the landscape more open, but the colours are still bright and fairly full of contrast. The festivities are taking place on different planes within the picture, and also seem to be far removed from each other due to the repoussoir elements on the left and the highlighting of the middle ground. People are seated around a table smoking by the house in the left foreground, with others dancing beyond them. There is a fight going on a little further off on the right, and in the distance a company has gathered around a tent by the church. The man who has fallen over in the centre foreground and the unsteady one being helped along by his wife on the right are rather isolated from the rest. De Bloot was evidently looking for a new compositional scheme for the subject, but in that he was not entirely successful. The fact that he was experimenting is also demonstrated by the infrared examination of the painting, which seems to indicate that the group of figures to the right of the house in the foreground was drastically altered.6 As far as the sense of depth is concerned, this Country Kermis displays some similarity to the one in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which may be from a slightly later date.7
The most curious element is the elegantly dressed child in the foreground. The plumed headgear identifies it as a boy. He is holding a gold jingler with a rock-crystal gum stick.8 Draped over his shoulder like a sash is a two-stranded pearl necklace with a medallion, the decoration on which cannot be made out. He has not the slightest connection with the scene behind him, either compositionally or through the direction of his gaze. His figure was not reserved, and the background clearly shows through his pinafore.9 Since the face was executed far more thinly than those of the others, and with harsher colours, it was probably added by another artist. That would not have been done all that much later, because the dating of the boy’s clothes closely matches that of the picture itself.10 Because it is such an unusual visual motif in the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch painting it is difficult to make out whether it is a child’s portrait or a moralizing comment on the events. Since he is so lavishly bejewelled, with the ‘pearl sash’ being particularly exceptional, it is less plausible that it is a likeness. Given the wild goings-on behind him, this boy would more probably be a symbol of innocence.11
Richard Harmanni, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
R. Trnek, Die holländischen Gemälde des 17. Jahrhunderts in der Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien, coll. cat. Vienna 1992, p. 82
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 53, no. 535; 1976, p. 122, no. A 1468
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Pieter de Bloot, Country Kermis, 1639', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6083
(accessed 13 November 2024 02:57:55).