Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 183.5 cm × width 221 cm
outer size: depth 9 cm (support incl. frame)
total: weight 48 cm (support incl. frame)
Adriaen Cornelisz Beeldemaker
The Hunter
1653
Inscriptions
- signature and date, on the stock of the musket (A and C ligated, A and N ligated): AN º 1653 / AC·beeLdemaeker
Technical notes
Support The support consists of four pieces of similar plain-weave canvas with a prominent vertical seam at approx. 109 cm from the left edge and a less visible horizontal one at approx. 94 cm from the top, and has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Cusping is visible on all sides.
Preparatory layers The single, rather thick, beige-grey ground extends up to the tacking edges. It consists of white and black pigment particles of various sizes, and some ochre-coloured pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. An initial lay-in was made of the landscape in brown and of the sky in light blue, without leaving reserves for the hunter and the dogs. Both of these were executed next. A reserve was left in the hunter’s coat for the heads of two of the hounds, all of which were painted from dark to light over a warm greyish underlayer, beginning with those in the foreground. The hare was added in a later stage over the barrel of the musket, the sky and the hunter’s back. The head of the dog on the far right as well as the plants in the foreground were also later additions. The hunting-horn appears to have been an afterthought, as it was painted on top of the landscape and the hunter’s coat and on either side of the dog leash dangling from his arm. The paint surface is fairly smooth, with the exception of the impasted highlights.
Anna Krekeler, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 19 November 2008
- paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-A-750/1-2, 19 November 2008
- technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 19 November 2008
Condition
Fair. There is a strong craquelure throughout with locally raised but stable paint along the cracks. The landscape and sky are particularly abraded. Discoloured retouching is visible in the sky. The varnish has yellowed. It has an uneven gloss and saturates moderately.
Conservation
- conservator unknown, 1954: varnish removed
- conservator unknown, 1977: scratches in varnish and paint layer treated
Provenance
…; ? anonymous sale, Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 21 August 1799 sqq., no. 176 (‘Een jager levensgroote, houdende een Snaphaan op schouder waar aan een doode Haas hangt: hij is verzelt van verscheide Jagthonden, in een Landschap […] op Doek, […] hoog 72, breed 86 duim [185 x 221 cm]’), fl. 159, to Van Iperen;1…; ? sale, Barend Kooy (1750-1819, Amsterdam), Amsterdam, 88 Herengracht, sold on the premises (P. Postumus et al.), 20 April 1820, no. 8, as ‘Ab. Beeldemaker’ (‘Hoog 72, breed 84, duim. [185 x 215.9 cm] Een kapitaal bergachtig landschap. Op de voorgrond ziet men een Jager die van de jagt komt, met eenige Honden […]’), fl. 159, to De Boer;2…; collection Willem Gruyter Jr (1817-1880), Amsterdam, by 1867;3 his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.) 24 October 1882 sqq., no. 8, fl. 1,035, to the museum4
Object number: SK-A-750
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Adriaen Cornelisz Beeldemaker (? Rotterdam 1618 - The Hague 1709)
Adriaen Cornelisz Beeldemaker may be the same person as the Arie who was baptized in Rotterdam on 15 July 1618 as the son of Cornelis Cornelisz Hagener and Adriaentje Arens. He probably adopted the surname Beeldemaker (picture maker) at an early date in reference to his profession. In 1649 he became betrothed in Rotterdam to Maria or Margaretha van der Merck from ’s-Gravendeel, a village south-west of Dordrecht. Her father was the fine art painter Jacob van der Merck, who was living in Leiden at the time. Beeldemaker then moved there himself and registered with the Guild of St Luke in 1650. The following year he left the city for an unknown destination, but had returned by 1654-55. The couple subsequently settled in Dordrecht, where Maria gave birth to a daughter in 1657. Their son François, born in 1659, would also become a painter. Beeldemaker was widowed in 1662, and three years later he married Sara Tegelbergh in Oudewater, near Gouda. He moved back to Leiden, where he is recorded as paying his guild membership dues in 1665-68 and 1673-75 and rented a house on Rapenburg. His son Cornelis was born in 1671, and he too followed in his father’s footsteps.
In 1676 Beeldemaker was living at Maliebaan in The Hague and took out a three-year lease on a garden in the same street where he and the owner built a summer house, in which he painted ‘some perspectives’. He acquired his burgess rights in 1677. More than three decades later he died in that city; his funeral tax was paid on 19 February 1709.
Beeldemaker made his name chiefly as an animal painter, above all of dogs. He was also a portraitist, and received several major commissions, including one in 1672 for a picture of the dean and wardens of the Leiden drapers’ guild.5 In that genre, though, he was no more than mediocre. His earliest dated work is a 1644 likeness of an unknown man,6 and his last one, Landscape with Two Hunters Pestering a Sleeping Milkmaid, is from 1701.7
Richard Harmanni, 2022
References
J. van Gool, De nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen: Waer in de levens- en kunstbedryven er tans levende en reets overleedene schilders, die van Houbraken, noch eenig ander schryver, zyn aengeteekend, verhaelt worden, I, The Hague 1750, pp. 63-64 (as Johannes Beeldemaker); 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.], IV, Rotterdam 1881-82, pp. 110, 159; ibid., V, 1882-83, pp. 48, 212; Bredius in A. Bredius and C. Hofstede de Groot, Musée Royal de La Haye (Mauritshuis): Catalogue raisonné des tableaux et des sculptures, coll. cat. The Hague 1895, p. 16; G.H. Veth, ‘Aantekeningen omtrent eenige Dordrechtsche schilder: Aanvullingen en verbeteringen’, Oud Holland 21 (1903), pp. 111-24, esp. pp. 111-12; Haverkorn van Rijsewijk in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, III, Leipzig 1909, pp. 164-65; Nederland’s Patriciaat 16 (1926), p. 12; Wijnman in P.C. Molhuysen et al. (eds.), Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek, IX, Leiden 1933, cols. 44-45; Römer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, VIII, Munich/Leipzig 1994, p. 236; Van der Zeeuw in N.I. Schadee (ed.), Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Historisch Museum) 1994, pp. 270-71; Bredius notes, RKD
Entry
This monumental painting with an almost life-sized hunter accompanied by a pack of hounds was made in 1653, in a period when Adriaen Beeldemaker’s whereabouts are unknown. He had probably gained experience with the genre in his native Rotterdam, which flourished there thanks to the work of artists like Ludolf de Jongh and Abraham Hondius.8
This landscape includes no fewer than eight hounds, two of which are depicted with only their heads: the one of a spaniel type on the far right and another to the right of the fawn-coloured animal on the left. They are all hunting dogs, and there are at least two breeds. The greyhounds, with long legs and pointed snouts, were used for coursing, because their keen eyesight and speed made them ideal for tracking and overtaking game. The second main variety was generally the beagle, a running dog with hanging ears that followed the scent of the prey with its nose to the ground, barking as it went. However, the two smaller ones in the middle appear to be Brittany spaniels, ‘pointers’ which work closely with the hunter. They point at the game by standing motionless in front of it.9
The dead hare dangling from the barrel of the gun shows that the man is returning from the hunt. He is about to descend a hillock, with his companions going on ahead on horseback and in carriages. The artist picked a low vantage point that focuses attention on the action in the front, with great depth in the valley being suggested by the tiny size of the rest of the party. The chosen viewpoint also accentuates the menacing clouds above the landscape, reinforcing the drama of the scene. On only one other occasion did Beeldemaker place the dogs in the foreground of a composition with a figure also heading home. There, too, he devoted considerable attention to the sky,10 but that picture cannot rival the one in the Rijksmuseum, partly because of its much smaller size. A history piece of Diana hunting that measures 200 x 242 cm is the only work in Beeldemaker’s oeuvre that is larger.11 He did not often paint on this scale, which is why the Rijksmuseum canvas is rightly regarded as his finest achievement.12 It is a masterpiece from quite early in his career, and one that he was never again able to match.
Richard Harmanni, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
L.J. Bol, Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den grossen Meistern: Landschaften und Stilleben, Braunschweig 1969, p. 254; K.J. Müllenmeister, Meer und Land im Licht des 17. Jahrhunderts, II: Tierdarstellungen in Werken niederländischer Künstler: A-M, Bremen 1978, p. 21, no. 9; B. Haak, Hollandse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw, Amsterdam 1984, p. 438; F. Scholten, ‘Ludolf de Jongh en de aristocratisering van het genre’, in N.I. Schadee (ed.), Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Historisch Museum) 1994, pp. 143-52, esp. pp. 144-46
Collection catalogues
1886, p. 5, no. 16a; 1887, p. 10, no. 70; 1903, p. 42, no. 446; 1934, p. 42, no. 446; 1960, p. 33, no. 446; 1976, p. 105, no. A 750
Citation
Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Adriaen Cornelisz Beeldemaker, The Hunter, 1653', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5953
(accessed 22 November 2024 15:42:13).