The Painter’s Studio

Entry

There are four known depictions of painter’s studios by Adriaen van Ostade: a drawing in Berlin,⁴ an etching which exists in 12 states,⁵ the present undated panel, and another one of 1663 in Dresden.⁶ Some scholars have assigned the Rijksmuseum work to around the same time as the Dresden picture,⁷ and even an execution in the first half of the 1670s has been proposed,⁸ but Schnackenburg’s suggestion that it was made around 1645 is more plausible,⁹ although perhaps a couple of years should be added to that. The box-like space of the interior with its diagonal side wall first appears in Van Ostade’s paintings and etchings in 1647.¹⁰ The overall brown tonality and the heavily shadowed background differ from the typical blonde hues and even lighting of the 1663 Dresden scene, and suggest a dating to the end of the 1640s, as does the relatively sketchy treatment of the figures. This is also supported by the dendrochronology, which shows that the panel would probably have been ready for use around 1642.¹¹ The drawn painter’s studio in Berlin, which has an entirely different design, was convincingly placed around 1645 by Schnackenburg,¹² and thus seems to precede the Rijksmuseum picture. Although it has been claimed that Van Ostade’s extant print of the subject is freely based on the present composition and should therefore be given an early date,¹³ it actually has more in common with the 1663 work in Dresden. It has been argued that the latter painting may be connected with Van Ostade’s election as dean of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1662, and that the one in the Rijksmuseum can be related to his naming as the guild’s warden in 1647,¹⁴ but this seems rather speculative.¹⁵

The studio inhabited by Van Ostade’s Amsterdam and Dresden painters differs little from the humble, often ramshackle and cluttered abodes found in his peasant interiors. The room in the Rijksmuseum work includes a mezzanine and a dividing wall in the background made of rough-hewn boards, giving the impression that the space may have originally functioned as a barn. Similar wooden partitions occur in a number of earlier seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish workshop scenes.¹⁶ Various nineteenth and early-twentieth-century commentators believed that the Rijksmuseum picture is of Van Ostade’s actual atelier and that it features himself.¹⁷ However, just as the interior is a product of Van Ostade’s imagination, the painter, who is seen from behind, is undoubtedly a fanciful stereotype. His beret, which had been a fashionable item of clothing in the sixteenth century, was already completely outdated before the beginning of the seventeenth century, and it was by way of Rembrandt’s self-portraits and those of his followers, including Gerrit Dou, that this archaic headgear became the artist’s attribute par excellence.¹⁸ The slits in the sleeves are probably also a fictitious detail meant to transport the figure to the level of the cliché type.¹⁹ In the early states of the print, the preposterously tall bonnet and exaggeratedly pointed chin and nose move the painter into the realm of caricature.

While the setting and the artist’s costume are fanciful, other elements would not be out of place in an actual seventeenth-century Dutch workshop. Behind the painter a boy is busy grinding pigments, which according to Karel van Mander’s didactic poem Den grondt der edel vry schilder-const (fol. 51, line 48) and apprenticeship contracts was one of the responsibilities assigned to pupils.²⁰ Next to him is an older man setting up the artist’s palette. Often also identified as a student in the literature, this figure’s age suggests that he is more likely to be an assistant, possibly a master painter who could not afford a studio of his own or was not inclined to establish one because of a lack of substantial talent.²¹ The large cloth suspended from the ceiling also appears in other seventeenth-century Dutch depictions of artists’ workshops, including a drawing from around 1658 by Rembrandt.²² It has been suggested that its function here is to keep dust off of the landscape in the making.²³ If that were so, it would be a truly comic element, given the gaping cracks between the boards of the ceiling and the holes in the piece of fabric itself. However, the position above the window and not above the easel in Rembrandt’s drawing and other studio scenes supports an alternative hypothesis, which is that the cloth was a device to reflect light.²⁴

A Latin inscription first appearing on state V of Van Ostade’s etching reads in translation: ‘Though you a painter, paint a painting with Apelles’ art which now fools painters, and now the birds. Yet, gnawing envy, unless fortune bless you, will take away the prizes worthy of your talents.’²⁵ As this state of the print can be dated to before 1670 it has been convincingly argued that these lines were inscribed on the plate by Van Ostade himself or under his supervision.²⁶ The Rijksmuseum picture may carry a message similar to that expressed in the poem to the effect that the artist’s hard work may potentially be in vain. Certainly, his intense concentration and the industriousness of his pupil and assistant contrast not only with the inactivity of the sleeping dog at the boy’s feet but also with the dilapidated condition of his humble surroundings. Van Ostade perhaps intentionally placed the horse skull mounted on the wall above a bookcase on the same vertical axis as the painter in order to reinforce this vanitas notice.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements