Annunciation to the Shepherds

c. 1630 - c. 1640

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 111.9 cm × width 154.8 cm

Inscriptions

signature and date, lower centre, above the right-hand sheep: D. Wijntrack 16[.]0.F.

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 right, the one on the left has been removed. Shallow cusping is present on the left.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends partially over the top tacking edge, up to the ones at the bottom and on the right, and up to the current left edge of the canvas. The first layer is orangey-red and contains fine red and black pigment particles. The second layer is light grey and consists of charcoal, white and earth-coloured pigments.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges at the top and bottom, partially over the right one and up to the current left edge of the canvas. Judging by light halos around many of the compositional elements, reserves were probably used. Due to the heavily overpainted surface, it is impossible to further assess the build-up of the composition.
Gwen Tauber, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: G. Tauber, RMA, 12 March 2009
paint samples: G. Tauber, RMA, no. SK-A-2304/1, 12 March 2009
technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 12 March 2009

Condition

Poor. The support is very damaged and there are numerous inserts. The painting was severely flattened during lining, resulting in weave interference from the coarse lining canvas, and is disfigured by canvas deformations at repairs, heavy abrasions and overpainting. A strong craquelure pattern and innumerable chip losses characterize what remains visible of the original paint.

Conservation

J.A. Hesterman & Zn, 1907: canvas lined
conservator unknown, c., 1954: restored
M. Bosc, 2002: consolidated; filled, retouched and varnished

Provenance

? St George Civic Guard, Heusden, 17th century; donated by the former guardsmen of the St George Civic Guard, Heusden, to the museum, as dated 1670, with 6 other paintings, 1907; on loan to Heusden Town Hall, 1908-53; on loan to the DRVK since 1953

Object number: SK-A-2304

Credit line: Gift of the Oud-Schutters van St. Joris, Heusden

The artist

Dirck Wijntrack (Heusden before c. 1618 - The Hague 1678)

It is known from two documents of 1640 in which Dirck Wijntrack is referred to as a ‘bachelor from Heusden’ that he came from that small town near Den Bosch. He was probably born before 1618 because he was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church and his name does not occur in its baptismal records, which go back to that year. He is first registered in Rotterdam in 1640 and that is probably where he trained. He may have studied with Cornelis Saftleven, for his earliest extant paintings, such as the interior of a barn of 1638,¹ display an affinity with the latter’s work. Wijntrack married Aeltgen IJsbrants van Beaumont on 30 December 1640 and thereafter surfaces several times in the Rotterdam archives. She died during or shortly after the birth of a son in 1643, and a year later the artist wedded Geertruyt Pietersdr Montagne, a sister of the later wife of the artist Ludolf de Jongh. Wijntrack lived in Gouda for a while in the early 1650s, and possibly also in nearby Schoonhoven, which was Geertruyt’s birthplace. There is a document of 1651 in which he authorized his brother-in-law to collect money for him from the Rotterdam painter-dealer François Dircksz van Grevenbroeck.

Once again widowed, Wijntrack seems to have exchanged his work as an artist for a career in the civil service. In 1657 he was appointed ‘Clerk to the Secretary of the Noble, Most Mighty States of Holland and West Friesland’. He is mentioned several times in the Hague archives in the 1660s and ’70s. Wijntrack married for the third time in 1662, and in 1670 he fell ill and made his last will. He died eight years later. A large number of his paintings, among them landscapes with waterfowl, foxes, rabbits and other animals, are listed as being in the estate of his son-in-law in 1686.

Wijntrack specialized in animals, which he depicted by the waterside or in farmyards, and was particularly fond of waterfowl. He also made a few interiors of barns and kitchens, and supplied the staffage for several extant works by Joris van der Haagen. Wijntrack also collaborated with Jan Wijnants. There are no known paintings after 1654, and his last dated one is a farmyard with waterfowl signed jointly by him and Wijnants.²

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

References
J.A. Gerlach Jr, Oorsprong, geschiedenis en tegenwoordige toestand van het collegie van oude schutters van den voetboog van St. Joris en der jonge Colveniers schutters te Heusden, met de afbeelding van hunne gedenkstukken, Groningen 1862; Bredius in A.D. de Vries, A. Bredius and S. Muller, Catalogus der schilderijen in het Museum Kunstliefde te Utrecht, coll. cat. 1885, pp. 100-01; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 13 (1895), pp. 112-20, esp. pp. 115-17; P. Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, ‘Ludolf (Leuff) de Jongh’, Oud Holland 14 (1896), pp. 36-46, esp. pp. 38-39; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, II, Leipzig/Vienna 1910, p. 910; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, II, The Hague 1916, pp. 582-84; M.J.F.W. van der Haagen, ‘De samenwerking van Joris van der Haagen en Dirck Wijntrack’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), pp. 43-48; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, VII, The Hague 1921, p. 289; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXVI, Leipzig 1947, p. 334; Buijsen in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, pp. 268-69; G. Wuestman, ‘Nieuwe biografische gegevens over Dirck Wijntrack (Heusden in of vóór 1618-1678 Den Haag)’, Oud Holland 123 (2010), pp. 78-79; Bredius notes, RKD

Entry

As far as is known this Annunciation to the Shepherds is the only history piece in the oeuvre of Dirck Wijntrack, who principally focused on depicting animals.³ Two shepherds, kneeling and seated on the ground in the right foreground with an angel behind them, are gazing up at the radiance in the sky (Luke 2:1-20).⁴ Their clumsy rendering suggests that the world did not lose a gifted figure painter with Wijntrack’s death. In all fairness, though, it is difficult to assess this work properly, because it was badly damaged when German troops blew up Heusden Town Hall in the night of 4-5 November 1944,⁵ and then so heavily restored that little of an autograph nature remains visible.

The date after the signature has always been read as ‘1670’, which would make this Wijntrack’s only painting from after 1654.⁶ The third digit, though, is difficult to discern, and could be a ‘3’. Fred Meijer believes that the canvas should definitely be placed in the 1630s.⁷ His observation that this must be an early picture is completely convincing. The rather unrefined composition and the slightly naive manner both in the human figures and the animal heads, most of which are in profile, point towards a youthful work. The only comparable painting in Wijntrack’s oeuvre is a barn with cows and sheep in Assen, which is dated 1638.⁸ This may have been why Meijer proposed the same year of execution for the Rijksmuseum canvas, but the final digit looks more like an ‘0’, which would mean that the picture was made in 1630 or, just possibly, in 1640.

The painting’s provenance from the St George Civic Guard in Heusden also suggests an earlier date than 1670 because Wijntrack grew up in the fortress town before moving to Rotterdam in or before 1640. Several members of the Wijntrack, or Van Wijntrack, family served in the Heusden guard in the seventeenth century, among them a Dirck Anthonisz Wijntrack and a Dirck Wijntrack (the dates rule both of them out as the artist),⁹ which makes it likely that the work came into the possession of the civic guard soon after it was executed. Wijntrack may even have been commissioned to produce it for their headquarters.¹⁰

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

Buijsen in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, pp. 269, 271 (as dated 1670)

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 618, no. A 2304 (as dated 1670)

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2024, 'Dirck Wijntrack, Annunciation to the Shepherds, c. 1630 - c. 1640', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.7712

(accessed 5 January 2025 03:34:32).