Object data
oil on panel
support: height 32 cm × width 42.7 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Andries Both
The Card Players
c. 1630 - c. 1635
Inscriptions
- signature, lower centre, on the table (A and B ligated): ABoth
Technical notes
Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 0.4 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1606. The panel could have been ready for use by 1615, but a date in or after 1625 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the edges of the support. The first, off-white layer is followed by a thin, greyish ground.
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 first lay-in of the composition was made with a transparent dark brown paint, which was left uncovered in some areas such as the dark shadow of the figure sitting on the right and in the darker right side of the barrel left of centre. Colour and detail were added using very thin and medium-rich paints, leaving approximately 0.5 cm of the underlying dark brown layer exposed on all sides. The background was executed after the figures. The various adjacent elements were placed with very few overlaps. Distinct brushmarking that makes the paint resemble hatching is visible here and there, such as the shadowed areas of the clothing and hats.
Zeph Benders, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: Z. Benders, RMA, 15 May 2008
- paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-2557/1-2, 15 May 2008
- technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 15 May 2008
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 16 December 2008
Condition
Fair. The plank has an old horizontal crack in the upper left corner measuring approx. 16 cm. The varnish has yellowed.
Provenance
…; collection Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague;1 from whom on loan to the museum, 1907-11;2 donated from his estate to the museum, May 1912
Object number: SK-A-2557
Credit line: Gift of the heirs of C. Hoogendijk, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Andries Both (Utrecht c. 1612 - Venice 1642)
Andries Both was born in Utrecht to the glass-painter Dirk Joriaensz Both and his wife Anna Andriesdr Schinckels, and was an elder brother of Jan Both. Andries stated that he was 24 years old in 1636 and January 1637, so it can be assumed that his date of birth was in or around 1612. The enrolment of a son of Dirk Both as an apprentice to Abraham Bloemaert in 1624-25 fits in well with his age. The information we have about Andries from Joachim von Sandrart appears to be correct, unlike the biographer’s reports about Jan. Von Sandrart could have met Andries when he himself was working in Gerard van Honthorst’s studio in 1625-27. His assertion that Andries travelled to Italy by way of France is borne out by a drawing dated 1633 with an inscription saying that it was made in Rouen.3 Andries was registered as living in Strada Felice in Rome in 1636, and on 14 November of that year he attended a meeting of the Accademia di San Luca. On 1 January 1637 he witnessed a notarized document for Pieter van Laer, stating that he had lodged in the same house as him in Via Marguta in 1635. After his brother Jan arrived in Rome they were both recorded in Strada Vittoria in 1639 and 1641. Andries Both drowned in Venice on 23 March 1642.
Andries’s oeuvre is small as a result of his premature death. He was not only a painter but a creditable draughtsman as well. At the beginning of his career he drew street scenes in a style influenced by Abraham Bloemaert. He also etched in his Utrecht period. He made a few religious works early in his career before gradually shifting his focus to genre-like depictions of caricature types seen out of doors or in taverns. His earliest dated painting, of 1630, is one such example.4 He continued rendering his distinctive grinning low-life people in the bambocciades he produced under the influence of Pieter van Laer. The figures in the pictures of Andries and Jan Both are so closely related that it has been suggested that Andries was responsible for the staffage in his brother’s early paintings. That does not seem very likely, though, since there are no major changes in the figures in Jan’s works after Andries’s death.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
References
J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), pp. 184-85; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, p. 114; S. Muller, Schilders-vereenigingen te Utrecht: Bescheiden uit het Gemeente-Archief, Utrecht 1880, p. 118; Moes in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, IV, Leipzig 1910, pp. 409-10; G.J. Hoogewerff, Bescheiden in Italië omtrent Nederlandsche kunstenaars en geleerden, II, The Hague 1913, pp. 50, 53; G.J. Hoogewerff, ‘Pieter van Laer en zijn vrienden: Een acte’, Mededeelingen van het Nederlandsch Historisch Instituut te Rome 16 (1936), pp. 119-28; G.J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600-1725): Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven, The Hague 1942, pp. 108, 110, 280; M.R. Waddingham, ‘Andries and Jan Both in France and Italy’, Paragone, no. 171 (1964), pp. 13-43, esp. pp. 13-25; Blankert in A. Blankert, H.J. de Smedt and M.E. Houtzager, Nederlandse 17e eeuwse Italianiserende landschapschilders, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum) 1965, pp. 109-10; C. Limentani Virdis, ‘I Fiamminghi e la Serenissima: Pittori e generi’, in C. Limentani Virdis and D. Banzato (eds.), Fiamminghi: Arte fiamminga e olandese del Seicento nella Repubblica Veneta, exh. cat. Padua (Palazzo della Ragione) 1990, p. 13-24, esp. p. 24; Huys Janssen in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XIII, Munich/Leipzig 1996, pp. 240-41; P. Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-Century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 88-91
Entry
This painting of a group of people by a shed combines two events which seem to be taking place independently of each other. The three men playing cards around a makeshift table are so absorbed in their game that they are paying no attention to the other three figures on the left. Both scenes are admonitions against immoral behaviour, for the woman is being fondled by the man beside her while she is holding an egg that she has taken from the seller’s basket. Card-playing had been regarded as morally corrupting since the beginning of the fifteenth century. Games of chance were equated with idleness, avarice, discord, deceit and indecency.5 The message broadcast by the woman being seduced here is abundantly clear. In addition, a basket of eggs had symbolized the suggestive erotic meaning of the egg since the sixteenth century. It stands for both virility and fertility, and is therefore associated with infidelity and adultery in this kind of context.6
The caricatural and farcical types that Andries Both painted here are very reminiscent of the work of Adriaen Brouwer, who hailed from Antwerp and was briefly active in Haarlem, and Adriaen van Ostade, who was born in Haarlem. There are compositional similarities between the Rijksmuseum picture and the Peasant Concert in a private collection in England.7 It too shows a group of men by a shed with a view through the trees on the left. One wonders, though, whether this really is an imaginary evocation of the French countryside as Waddingham suggested.8 The similarities in the style of the figures to those in a tavern scene dated 1634 in Utrecht are so great that the two paintings can be dated to roughly the same period.9
Richard Harmanni, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
R. Bangel, ‘Die Sammlung Hoogendijk im Rijksmuseum’, Der Cicerone 7 (1915), pp. 171-89, esp. p. 178; G.J. Hoogewerff, De Bentvueghels, The Hague 1952, pp. 90, 129; M.R. Waddingham, ‘Andries and Jan Both in France and Italy’, Paragone, no. 171 (1964), pp. 13-43, esp. pp. 18-19
Collection catalogues
1926, p. 35, no. 590a; 1934, p. 58, no. 590a; 1976, p. 127, no. A 2557
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Andries Both, The Card Players, c. 1630 - 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.6191
(accessed 24 December 2024 18:18:39).