A Shepherd and Washerwomen at a Spring

c. 1630 - c. 1637

Object data

oil on copper

support: height 29.3 cm × width 43.5 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, bottom centre, on a stone: V. Laer.
inscription, on the reverse, bottom centre: Van Laer.fe.

Technical notes

The support is a copper plate with a tin coating on both sides. The paint is applied evenly on a light ground. A greyish brown underpaint appears to be present in the landscape.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 30 August 2004

Condition

Fair. There is some abrasion in several areas of the background. Small paint losses are visible throughout, possibly as the result of blistering due to corrosion. There are some minor discoloured retouchings, and the thick varnish has discoloured.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1914: blisters consolidated and laid down; revarnished

Provenance

...; sale, Gijsbert de Clercq (1850-1911), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 1 June 1897, no. 42, bought in; from Gijsbert de Clercq to the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1899;¹ from the Vereniging Rembrandt, fl. 200, to the museum, March 1901

Object number: SK-A-1945

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Pieter Bodding van Laer (Haarlem 1599 - ? in or after 1642)

Pieter van Laer was probably trained by Esaias van de Velde in his native town of Haarlem. His first works, a series of drawings for a songbook which can be dated 1624, show the strong influence of Van de Velde. According to Von Sandrart, Van Laer and his brother Roeland travelled to Italy, where he stayed for 16 years. He is first recorded as living in Rome in 1625, and he was still there three years later. Von Sandrart, who arrived in Rome himself in 1629, gives a detailed account of Pieter’s awkward appearance, which gained him the nickname ‘Bamboccio’ (rag doll) amongst the Bentvueghels. Von Sandrart also describes Van Laer’s working method as precise, and states that he did not draw from life, nor did he use prints; instead he painted mainly from memory. Indeed, there are very few known drawings by the artist. Van Laer returned to Haarlem in 1639, but according to Schrevelius soon left on a second journey to Italy. This was probably in 1642, because the 1654 will of Van Laer’s sister mentions that he had left Haarlem 12 years earlier. It is not known where or when he died.

Van Laer mainly painted small canvases. According to Passari he invented the distinct genre of Bambocciate, a version of low-life painting that has a strong naturalistic style and subjects indebted to Italian popular culture. Only one signed and dated painting is known, A Blacksmith in a Roman Ruin of 1635², and only 30 can be firmly attributed to him. Van Laer also produced about 20 small etchings with subjects related to his painted oeuvre.

Amongst his patrons were the Viceroy of Naples, Ferdinand Afan de Ribera and Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio. His paintings were also much sought after on the open market, however, and he soon developed a large following that produced Bambocciate. Many of these were at one time attributed to Van Laer himself, but are in fact the work of his followers, the most important of whom were Jan Miel, Johannes Lingelbach, Michelangelo Cerquozzi, and to a certain extent Michael Sweerts. His prints may have also contributed to his influence on Dutch artists of the following generation like Jan Asselijn, Karel Dujardin and Nicolaes Berchem. Houbraken’s remark that Philips Wouwerman owned drawings by Van Laer is supported by the latter’s borrowing of a figure in a drawing by Van Laer for one of his paintings.³

Taco Dibbits, 2007

References
Schrevelius 1647, p. 290; De Bie 1661, p. 169; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 183-84; Passeri 1934 (1679), pp. 72-74 (fols. 36r-37v); Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 359-64; Hoogewerff 1932, pp. 1-17, 205-20; Kurtz 1958, pp. 231-32; Blankert in Utrecht 1965 (1978), pp. 92-94; Janeck 1968, pp. 1-64; Schatborn in Amsterdam 2001, pp. 85-87

Entry

This is one of the few signed paintings by Pieter van Laer. An etching after it, which shows the washerwoman and the shepherd in the foreground on a slightly smaller scale, was made by Cornelis Visscher (c. 1628/29-1658).⁴ The print is considered to be a companion piece to Visscher’s etching The Hunters, which was also executed after a painting by Van Laer.⁵

Hoogewerff suggested that a drawing might have been the source for the shepherd, whose pose appears to be based on one of the most famous ancient statues in Rome, the Spinario.⁶ Levine noted that the washerwoman in the background repeats a motif commonly found on Roman sarcophagi.⁷ The figure of the Spinario also reappears in a picture in Vienna, which supports the hypothesis that it might have been based on a drawing.⁸ However, apart from a drawing of a seated figure which Philips Wouwerman used in A Landscape with a Cottage and a Shepherd, no drawings by Pieter van Laer can be related to paintings.⁹

Briganti dated the present painting to after Van Laer’s return to Holland in 1639.¹⁰ Ledermann, on the other hand, suggested that it was painted during Van Laer’s stay in Rome in the 1630s.¹¹ There is only one dated painting by Van Laer and little is known about his activity after his return from Rome.¹² However, the tin coating with which the copper support was prepared indicates a date during Van Laer’s stay in Rome, as such coatings seem to have been used only in Italy.¹³

Taco Dibbits, 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. 164.

Literature

Janeck 1968, pp. 69-70, no. A.I.1, with earlier literature; Blankert in Utrecht 1965 (1978), pp. 24-25; Levine 1988, pp. 570-71; Levine in Turner 1996, XVIII, p. 623

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 154, no. 1403; 1934, p. 159, no. 1403; 1976, p. 332, no. A 1945; 2007, no. 164

Citation

T. Dibbits, 2007, 'Pieter Bodding van Laer, A Shepherd and Washerwomen at a Spring, c. 1630 - c. 1637', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.12086

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