Interior of a Peasant Hut

c. 1645 - 1652

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 51.5 cm × width 67 cm
outer size: depth 5.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, lower right, on the stool: B cuyp

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of three horizontally grained oak planks (13.5, 25 and 13 cm). The reverse is bevelled at the bottom and on the right, and has regularly spaced saw marks. The panel was partially thinned to approx. 1.3 cm and cradled (cradle now removed). Dendrochronology has shown the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1628. The panel could have been ready for use by 1639, but a date in or after 1645 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The smooth double ground does not extend over the edges of the support. The first, off-white layer primarily fills the grain of the wood, and is followed by a thin, ochre-coloured ground consisting of white pigment particles with an addition of dark brown earth particles.
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 at the top and on the left and right, and over the bottom edge. The composition was built up from the back to the front with thin, smooth, translucent dark paint and thicker, opaque, light paint. The second, ochre-coloured ground layer shows through and serves as a mid-tone in the background, and also in the flesh and the clothing of the figures, for which reserves were left. The fluid and unctuous paint was applied wet in wet and blended coarsely, relying on its thickness to determine the intensity of colour or tone. Small, free strokes of impasto were used for the highlights, which were sketchily applied to heighten the contrast, aided by equally loose strokes of translucent dark brown paint that suggest the deep shadows. Cross-sections show that the dark paint consists of mainly black and earth pigments, and the pale colours of lead white and a few earth particles. Both samples contain grey-blue glassy shards that increase the transparency of the paint.
Emma Boyce, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: E. Boyce, RMA, nos. SK-A-3297/1-2, 6 May 2010
infrared photography: E. Boyce, RMA, 17 May 2010
technical report: E. Boyce, RMA, 17 May 2010
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 23 June 2010

Condition

Fair. There is a slight difference in level at the lower join. A split in the panel on the bottom left edge affects the ground and paint layers in this area, while another split on the top right edge, visible only on the reverse, is aligned with one of the members of the (now removed) cradle. The paint is cracked along the joins and split at bottom left, and there are small losses of ground and paint in these places and along the edges. Microscopic paint losses have occurred mainly in the flesh areas and fine drying cracks are present in the dark passages. The thick varnish has yellowed significantly, is cracked and chipped in many places, and offers only limited saturation.

Provenance

…; collection Dominicus Antonius Josephus Kessler (1855-1939) and Mrs A.C.M.H. Kessler-Hülsmann (1868-1947), Kapelle op den Bosch, near Mechelen;¹ donated by Mrs A.C.M.H. Kessler-Hülsmann to the museum, with 83 other objects, 1940

Object number: SK-A-3297

Credit line: Gift of Mr and Mrs Kessler-Hülsmann, Kapelle op den Bosch

The artist

Benjamin Gerritsz Cuyp (Dordrecht 1612 - Dordrecht 1652)

Benjamin Gerritsz Cuyp was baptized in Dordrecht on 1 December 1612 as the second son of the glass-painter Gerrit Gerritsz Cuyp and his second wife Everijnken Albertsdr. He was the half-brother of Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, who according to Houbraken taught both him and his cousin Aelbert Cuyp. Although there are stylistic and formal influences from the early Rembrandt in particular, it is both undocumented and unlikely that Benjamin Cuyp trained with him. On 27 January 1631 he was registered as a journeyman in the Dordrecht Guild of St Luke, and swore his oath on 30 December 1632, a little under two years later. He is recorded in the town until the end of 1641, but would not have stayed there for much longer, for in July 1643 he was living in The Hague. He may have been back in Dordrecht briefly in late July 1644, soon after his father’s death. On 29 July 1645 he signed a document in Utrecht, where he settled in the second half of the 1640s. In 1649 no fewer than 17 of his paintings and 14 copies after his works were sold in the lottery run by Jan de Bondt in Wijk bij Duurstede, south-east of Utrecht. Cuyp was back in Dordrecht in 1652, where he made his last will on 16 August. He was buried in the Grote Kerk on 28 August.

Cuyp made cavalry skirmishes, peasant scenes and beach views. His history pieces deal with mythological and allegorical subjects, but above all with stories from the New Testament. He was very productive, which is all the more remarkable in the light of his early death. None of his paintings bear a date.²

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 248-49; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], I, Rotterdam 1877-78, p. 208; ibid., II, 1879-80, pp. 87-90; ibid., V, 1882-83, pp. 176-77, 179, 182; G.H. Veth, ‘Aelbert Cuyp, Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp en Benjamin Cuyp’, Oud Holland 2 (1884), pp. 233-90, esp. pp. 234-35, 253-55; G.H. Veth, ‘Aanteekeningen omtrent eenige Dordrechtsche schilders, XIII: Benjamin Gerritz. Cuyp’, Oud Holland 6 (1888), pp. 141-42; Lilienfeld in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, VIII, Leipzig 1913, p. 229; W. Veerman, ‘Cuyp, een Dordtse kunstenaarsfamilie’, in J.G. van Gelder et al., Aelbert Cuyp en zijn familie: Schilders te Dordrecht, exh. cat. Dordrecht (Dordrechts Museum) 1977-78, pp. 11-21, esp. pp. 17-18; P. Huys Janssen, ‘Pieter van Laer, Benjamin Cuyp, Gerard Douffet and Karel Dujardin in Utrecht’, Mercury, no. 11 (1990), pp. 53-56

Entry

The Fleming Adriaen Brouwer, who briefly worked in Haarlem in the late 1620s, introduced the Dutch to the subject of the boorish and brash behaviour of peasants smoking, drinking, making music, brawling and so on in inns and smoking dens. He and Adriaen van Ostade then developed the recurrent motifs and types of figure that remained popular until around mid-century in the rather vulgar representations of the simple life of peasants being played out in taverns and other interiors.³ Similar depictions were part of Benjamin Cuyp’s fairly diverse painted output, of which this is a typical example. The composition, brownish palette and characterization of the figures are related to a peasant scene of his that was sold in 1973, and to another interior that was offered for sale in 1982.⁴

The lack of dated works makes it difficult to place these pictures precisely. Ember regarded the one in the Rijksmuseum as an early painting, but the dendrochronology indicates a likely execution in or after 1645, which places it in the closing years of Cuyp’s life. It has also been suggested that this is an allegory of the five senses,⁵ but although the three figures amusing themselves could stand for Hearing, Taste and Smell, Touch and Sight are missing.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

I. Ember, ‘Benjamin Cuyp, der Genremaler’, Acta Historiae Artium 26 (1980), pp. 37-73, esp. pp. 39-40, 68, no. 129

Collection catalogues

1976, p. 185, no. A 3297

Citation

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022, 'Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp, Interior of a Peasant Hut, c. 1645 - 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8197

(accessed 23 November 2024 18:48:53).