Object data
oil on panel
support: height 24.4 cm × width 34.6 cm
Peeter Neeffs (I)
c. 1655 - c. 1660
oil on panel
support: height 24.4 cm × width 34.6 cm
…; collection James II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland ('The Kings Great Closet', Whitehall Palace, London, as either no. 21, as Peter Nisse (‘The prospect of a Church’)1 or as no. 557, as Peter Neefs (‘A Perspective of a Church’);2 sent by King William III of England, Scotland and Ireland, with other pictures from the English royal collection to his hunting lodge, Het Loo, Apeldoorn, c. 1700; by whom bequeathed to Prince Johan Willem Friso (1687-1711),3 but claimed by the English Crown, 3 August 1702, as no. 19 of the Earl of Stanhope’s list;4Het Loo, Apeldoorn, 1702-63;5 subsequently displayed in the picture gallery of the Stadhouderlijk Hof, The Hague, listed in the inventory, no. 15 (‘Een dito kerkje, extra uitvoerigh geschildert, door P. Neefs […] D. 10 x V. 1 D. 2½ [25.5 x 32.7 cm]’), 1763-64;6 passed to the museum, by 1800;7 on loan through the DRVK to the Galerij Prins Willem V, The Hague, since 1977
Object number: SK-A-287
Copyright: Public domain
Peeter Neeffs I (Antwerp c. 1578 - Antwerp 1656-61)
Although Peeter Neeffs (Pieter Neefs or Nefs) I left a considerable body of work – as we now know it chiefly church interiors8 – the facts about his life are scarce. He was the third son of Aart Neefs and Margareta Verspreet; his father’s fortunes as a merchant seem to have been badly affected by the Spanish Fury of 1576. Peeter’s date of birth is not known but has been estimated as circa 1578. His mother died in 1582 and his father, after a second marriage, died impoverished in 1609 in Mechelen.
Neeffs was in his twenties when he enrolled as a master in the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1609, but is not recorded in Antwerp as having been an apprentice and so was probably taught elsewhere. The close relationship between his early work and that of Hendrik van Steenwyck II (c. 1580-1649) has recently been clarified by Fusenig.9 If, as is probable, Neeffs’s means of establishing the novel, geometrically calculated perspective of his views related to that of Van Steenwyck, it would seem indeed likely that Neeffs was early active in his studio. Fusenig has rejected the Dresden Interior of a Church, which bears a date of 1605, as Neeffs’s earliest work. He charts his activity from 1615, but presumably his legitimate activity in Antwerp began when he became a master, although there are no dated works to prove it. Later Neeffs may have been assisted by his sons Lodewyck (b. 1617) and Peeter (b. 1620); neither was ever registered in the guild, and the latter’s work – at least when working independently – was inferior.
Neeffs relied on other artists to provide the staffage and probably also architectural embellishments. Among his collaborators are notably Frans Francken II (1581-1642) and Frans Francken III (1607-1667), Adriaen van Stalbemt (1580-1662), Bonaventura Peeters I (1614-1652) and possibly his brother Gillis (1612-1653; see SK-A-288), and Jan van den Hecke (1620-1684).10 He also painted in 1650 the room in which Gonzales Coques (1618-1684) portrayed members of the Antwerp patriciate while other artists contributed the paintings on display.11
In the guild’s accounts of 1612/13 Neeffs was one of nine entrants listed as not having paid their dues in full. His circumstances may have improved by his marriage – in fact – in 1612 to Maria Lauterbiens (or Louterbeens; but spelt by Neeffs Lauterbeins, see the inscription on SK-A-289) whose family owned properties in Antwerp in which Neeffs lived until at least the last years of his life. In the same year Neeffs took on what was to be his only apprentice.
Neeffs was never called on to perform official duties in the guild of St Luke; but an indication of his close to middling social standing is that one of Jan Brueghel I’s daughters acted as godmother to a child born in 1623. Works by Neeffs were in such distinguished Antwerp collections as those of Cornelis van der Geest, 1628, Arnold Lundens, 1639-49, Jeremias Wildens, 1653, and Suzanna Willemssens, 1657.
The Lundens inventory shows that in this instance Neeffs’s work was valued in the lower range of market prices. In the 1650s he was in financial difficulties, as is shown in records concerning his sale of his share of the Lauterbiens’s house in the Hobokenstraat. Mortuary dues to the guild incurred by his wife’s death at this time were unpaid. Although he continued to work (e.g. SK-A-287), his circumstances are obscure and his date of death and place of burial are unknown. That he was dead by 1661 can be inferred by the past tense used by Cornelis de Bie in his brief tribute in Het gulden cabinet.
REFERENCES
F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, II, pp. 608-14; E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, IV, pp. 144, 379, Ibid. V, p. 57, Ibid. VI, p. 492, Ibid. VII, p. 351, and Ibid. IX, p. 3; T. Fusenig, ‘Neeffs und Co. Die Antwerpener Architecturmalerei im frühen 17. Jahrhundert’, in H. Borggrefe and V. Lüpkes (eds.), Hans Vredeman de Vries und die Folgen: Ergebnisse des in Kooperation mit dem Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Gdanska durchgeführten internationalen Symposions am Weserrenaissance-Museum Schloss Brake, Marburg 2005 (Studien zur Kultur der Renaissance 3), pp. 143-51; P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), I, pp. 454, 487, 493 and Ibid. II, p. 272
This church interior is most likely to be that of an imaginary Gothic-style, Catholic church with the then fashionable, tabernacle altarpieces and choir screen. Indeed it is difficult to reconcile the configuration of such an interior with the small organ tucked away from the main body of the church and what is perhaps the nearby entrance in the foreground (as in SK-A-289), and related compositions). The same architectural layout, at night, is perhaps also depicted in the picture in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, but seen from further back and more to the left.12 Similar choir screens, often with side arches simply blocked in as here, appear in many church interiors by Neeffs. The strong light falls from the north.
Broos13 has questioned Jantzen’s attribution,14 followed in the 1976 museum catalogue, to Peeter Neeffs II. So far no satisfactory means has been advanced to distinguish the work of homonymous father and son. However, a group of works in which the architecture is poorly executed and the signature is written in cursive script, for instance the Mauritshuis Interior of Antwerp Cathedral of 1654,15 and three church interiors offered on the London market in 1983-84 of 1654, 1659 and 1660,16 display a consistently mediocre standard. The painting of 1659 was also signed by the versatile Jan van den Hecke I (1619-1687), who executed the figures (in a far more accomplished way than the architecture). He contributed the figures to another church interior, on the London art market in 1978,17 signed by ‘Den Auden Neeffs’ – an appellation which was occasionally used by Neeffs to distinguish his work from that of his son. Van den Hecke was probably absent from Antwerp between circa 1649 and circa 1659,18 and as the costumes look similar to those in the church interiors of 1659 and 1660, it seems likely that the painting by ‘Den Auden Neeffs’ was a very late work. The Rijksmuseum church interior is comparable in handling to this picture and superior to those cited above signed with cursive handwriting; therefore it is here reattributed to Peeter Neeffs I. According to Klein’s calculation the support would have been ready for use from 1653.
The figures (and the statue of the Virgin and Child near the entrance and the other atop the tabernacle frame on the right) in the Rijksmuseum picture compare with those in the Mauritshuis Interior of Antwerp Cathedral of 1654, and those in the cabinet (kunstkastje) in the Rijksmuseum collection (BK-NM-4190). These are the work of Frans Francken III (1607-1667); his manner when working in collaboration is also demonstrated in the church interiors offered on the London market in 1985 and 2017.19 On grounds of costume, they should indeed be dated to the second half of the 1650s. Of the altarpieces, that on the right showing the Magdalen at the Foot of the Cross may also be by him.
Gregory Martin, 2022
H. Jantzen, Das niederländische Architekturbild, Braunschweig 1979 [ed. princ. Leipzig 1910], no. 349 (as Peeter Neeffs II); R. van Leeuwen (ed.), Paintings from England, William III and the Royal Collections, exh. cat. The Hague (Mauritshuis) 1988-89, no. 19
1809, p. 50, no. 219; 1843, p. 43, no. 225; 1853, p. 20, no. 197 (valued at fl. 500); 1858, p. 98, no. 219 (incorrectly as from the Kabinet van Heteren, and repeated until and including the 1976 catalogue); 1864, p. 106, no. 228; 1880, p. 409, no. 480; 1885, p. 71, no. 480; 1887, p. 121, no. 1014; 1903, p. 191, no. 1717; 1976, p. 409, no. A 287 (as by Peeter Neeffs II)
G. Martin, 2022, 'Peeter (I) Neeffs, Interior of an Imaginary Gothic Church, Looking East, c. 1655 - c. 1660', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6752
(accessed 10 November 2024 22:56:49).