Peasant Meal

c. 1625 - c. 1635

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 21 cm × width 30.6 cm
outer size: depth 3.2 cm (support incl. frame and climate box)

Inscriptions

signature, with ligated monogram, lower right, on the stool: IB

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 1.2 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1604. The panel could have been ready for use by 1615, but a date in or after 1621 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, off-white ground extends over the edges of the support. It consists of white pigment particles with a tiny addition of earth pigments.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was painted quickly and efficiently in what appear to be only one or two layers. The figures were reserved in the background, leaving the ground locally exposed along the contours. They were laid in wet in wet in thin blended layers indicating light and dark areas. Thin brushstrokes were used to delineate forms and contours and indicate highlights. Delicate hatching was used for some of the highlighted areas, for instance in the white hat of the girl with her back to the viewer. A semi-transparent dark brown paint was used for the shadows on the floor and table. The print on the wall was indicated by scratching into the wet paint. Infrared photography revealed that the contour of the fireplace on the left was made slightly smaller. The paint layers are thin, with the exception of the more opaque darker grey area in the upper right background and the slightly impasted highlights and contours.
Ige Verslype, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 20 September 2005
infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 10 June 2009
paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-2555/1-2, 10 June 2009
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 10 June 2009

Condition

Fair. The paint surface is abraded throughout, especially along the grain of the wood. There are tiny paint losses exposing the ground and/or the support throughout.

Conservation

M. Zeldenrust, 1978: complete restoration

Provenance

…; collection Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague; from whom on loan to the museum, 1907-11;¹ donated from his estate to the museum, May 1912

Object number: SK-A-2555

Credit line: Gift of the heirs of C. Hoogendijk, The Hague

The artist

Jan Jansz Buesem (? Amsterdam c. 1599/1600 – ? in or after 1653)

In 1649 Jan Jansz Buesem said that he was 49 years old, so he was probably born in 1599 or 1600, most likely in Amsterdam, where he is documented from the 1640s on. By his own account he was a pupil of Pieter Quast, which is unusual, because the latter was his junior by five or six years, so it is also possible that Buesem worked as his assistant in 1630-34. He married Elsgen Goverts, who stated that she was his wife in 1646. It is not known when Buesem died, but the dating of his paintings suggests that it was in or after 1653.

Buesem followed the example of Adriaen Brouwer and Pieter Quast by specializing in depictions of peasants. He also produced still lifes, and in 1640 and 1642 he was paid for painting scenery in the playhouse on Keizersgracht. Problematically, there are several church interiors with his signature.² One of them bears the year 1627, which makes it his earliest known dated work.³ The subjects and execution of those pictures are untypical of Buesem’s later oeuvre. He may have started out as an architectural painter and then switched to peasants under Brouwer’s influence. His only dated scene in that genre, a canvas with a festive company in a huge barn, is from 1630.⁴ However, it is assumed that Buesem was still active in the 1650s. A Peasant Inn attributed to him has three peasants in the background who are based on figures in an etching by Adriaen van Ostade from around 1653.⁵

Erlend de Groot, 2022

References
A. Bredius, ‘Jan Buesem’, Oud Holland 26 (1908), pp. 91-92; Bredius in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, V, Leipzig 1911, pp. 198-99; B. Albach, Langs kermissen en hoven: Ontstaan en kroniek van een Nederlands toneelgezelschap in de 17de eeuw, Zutphen 1977, pp. 105-06; Grabach in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XV, Munich/Leipzig 1997, p. 58; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 57

Entry

This painting of a mother at table with three children is closely related to the repertoire of Pieter Quast, and more generally to scenes in the peasant genre by Adriaen Brouwer and the Van Ostades.⁶ For a long time it passed as a work by Pieter de Bloot, but has been attributed to Jan Jansz Buesem since 1960.⁷ It is very similar to other pictures of his in style and subject matter. The characteristic way in which the highlights are applied to the earthenware with dashes one above the other is found in another painting by the artist.⁸ The headgear with broad brims hiding the wearer’s eyes also features in a few scenes of peasants playing cards and carousing in taverns.⁹ It is a motif that seems to have been inspired by Brouwer’s oeuvre, although ultimately it derives from types by Pieter Brueghel I.¹⁰ Some of Buesem’s faceless worker types tend towards the caricature. The mother in the Rijksmuseum panel is blowing on a spoon of porridge for the youngest child, which is impatiently bawling for food on the right. In order to accentuate its agitation Buesem gave it a thick red nose and added highlights to moisten its cheeks. The other children are anxiously awaiting their turns, one of them holding a spoon, the other with its mouth wide open.

The interior and the household goods are often regarded as typical for the lowest classes in the seventeenth century. A fire is burning in the simple hearth on the left, with the cloud of smoke indicating that the chimney needs sweeping. Standing on the plain wooden floor is a still life of the very simplest earthenware.¹¹ It includes a coal pan, a jug, pots, jars and dishes, which were evidently not only used to prepare food but also to eat from. The sober interior is decorated with a print of an unidentifiable scene that has been pinned to the wall. The furniture is also of the plainest kind. The youngest girl is sitting on a chair resting on wide planks which have been broken off rather than sawn properly. The earthenware bowl underneath it is probably a chamberpot. The seat on the right has been made the same way, and appears to be a potty stool.¹²

Peasant Meal was probably made around 1630, which is the year of the artist’s only dated painting in this genre.¹³ In addition, by that time he seems to have been in touch with Pieter Quast, to whose work this picture is related. The dendrochronology, finally, indicates that a slightly earlier date cannot be ruled out either.¹⁴

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Collection catalogues

1920, p. 81, no. 535a (as Pieter de Bloot); 1934, p. 51, no. 535a (as Pieter de Bloot); 1960, p. 63, no. 658 AF1; 1976, p. 157, no. A 2555

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'attributed to Jan Jansz. Buesem, Peasant Meal, c. 1625 - c. 1635', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8098

(accessed 10 November 2024 08:44:56).