Joseph Interpreting the Dreams of the Baker and the Butler (Genesis 40:1-19)

c. 1632 - c. 1640

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 74 cm × width 61.8 cm × thickness 1.8 cm (support incl. cradle)
outer size: depth 6.0 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, upper left, on the window frame (B and G ligated): BG Cuijp

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of three vertically grained oak planks (approx. 21.1, 20.3 and 20 cm). The bottom edge has been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. The panel was thinned to approx. 0.5 cm and cradled. Two small reinforcing blocks have been attached between the cradle members. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1612. The panel could have been ready for use by 1623, but a date in or after 1629 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, smooth, pale cream-coloured ground extends up to the edges of the support. It is slightly translucent and consists of white and a few dark brown and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing A fluid underdrawing is clearly visible with the naked eye (but not with infrared photography) to the right of the left-hand figure, where it was originally planned. The contours of all the figures were loosely indicated with broad, dark lines.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from light to dark. The lower layer covers the entire background and varies in tone with coarse blending. The shadows were loosely and thinly added, allowing the underlying paint to show through. Imprecise reserves were left for the figures, and some details, such as the hair, were applied over the background. A cross-section from the dark part of the wall shows that it consists mainly of black, white and earth pigments. Foreground elements were executed more thickly with rich, unctuous paint, mostly applied wet in wet, especially the red and green clothing, the flesh colours and the lighter areas (which are slightly impasted, enhancing the modelling). Thin strokes of fluid paint were added to create small, bright highlights, particularly on shiny surfaces such as the metal chains and earthenware jug. Brown scumbles were used to deepen the shadows of the folds in the clothing. The texture of the brushwork is visible throughout.
Emma Boyce, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: E. Boyce, RMA, 6 May 2010
paint samples: E. Boyce, RMA, nos. SK-A-773/1-2, 6 May 2010
technical report: E. Boyce, RMA, 10 May 2010
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 June 2010

Condition

Fair. The entire right join has woodworm damage, approx. 1.5 cm wide. The ground and paint layer are cracked along the length of both joins. Additional cracks running along the grain are aligned with the edges of the fixed cradle members. There are small paint losses in the areas along the joins and edges. Retouchings of pinpoint paint losses in the dark areas, associated with small-scale shrinkage of the paint, have become matte and are slightly discoloured.

Provenance

? probate inventory, Aert Dircxsz Schrote (†, Dordrecht), 10 October 1652, no. 21 (‘Joseph metten backer [ende] schenker’);¹…; sale, Jonkheer Wolter Gockinga (1812-1883, Groningen), Amsterdam (Van Pappelendam & Schouten), 14 August 1883, no. 28, fl. 402.50, to Frederik Muller, for the museum²

Object number: SK-A-773

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.³

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

This Old Testament story was painted on several occasions in the seventeenth century by artists from the school of Rembrandt.⁴ When Joseph was thrown into prison by Potiphar, he served his two cellmates, a baker and butler who had both worked at court. At one time they asked him to interpret their dreams. He predicted that in three days the butler would get his job back and the baker would be beheaded.

In this signed work by Benjamin Cuyp, the standing Joseph is making speaking gestures with his hands, but he is not counting off the remaining days for his cellmates, as is often done in imitation of a print by Lucas van Leyden.⁵ He is characterized as a nurturer by the basket of bread and the flagon, objects that refer to the jobs of his chained fellow prisoners. Although Cuyp repeatedly painted certain subjects, this is the only one of Joseph interpreting the servants’ dreams,⁶ so it may be one of the five pictures listed as Cuyps in the 1652 probate inventory of Aert Dircxsz Schrote (or Dircksen Schroote) of Dordrecht and described as ‘Joseph with a baker [and] cupbearer’.⁷

A very loose preparatory sketch can be seen beneath the surface of the figure on the left, and it seems that Cuyp originally wanted to show him bending further forward. The scene is not dominated by the flaxen yellow that is so characteristic of the artist. The fairly colourful palette, which is particularly reminiscent of the very early Rembrandt’s use of colour in the seated man on the right,⁸ enables the painting to be dated to the 1630s. The dendrochronology also indicates an origin in or after 1629,⁹ which probably makes it one of Cuyp’s early works.¹⁰ The man on the left and the figure of Joseph are depicted very similarly in Cuyp’s Quack in Glasgow.¹¹

Ember has stated that the Rijksmuseum painting is a companion piece to Cuyp’s Liberation of St Peter in Kassel,¹² but even leaving aside the different dimensions the composition gives not the slightest reason for this assumption.¹³ Nor is it likely that Cuyp based the Amsterdam scene on a reversed drawing of the subject of around 1639 which Benesch attributed to Rembrandt but which Boström gave to Cuyp himself.¹⁴ The influence of Rembrandt’s work from the late 1620s is evident above all in the way in which the light is used to define the space.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

I. Ember, ‘Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp (1612-1652)’, Acta Historiae Artium 25 (1979), pp. 89-141, esp. pp. 123-24, 140, no. 105; Van de Kamp in C. Tümpel et al., Het Oude Testament in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Joods Historisch Museum) 1991-92, p. 226, no. 14

Collection catalogues

1886, p. 18, no. 67a; 1887, p. 33, no. 257; 1903, p. 79, no. 752; 1934, p. 78, no. 752; 1976, p. 185, no. A 773

Citation

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2022, 'Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp, Joseph Interpreting the Dreams of the Baker and the Butler (Genesis 40:1-19), c. 1632 - c. 1640', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8198

(accessed 23 November 2024 18:32:58).