Peasants in an Interior

1661

Object data

oil on copper

support: height 36.5 cm × width 46.5 cm

Inscriptions

signature and date, bottom right: Av. Ostade . 1661

Technical notes

Support The copper plate is approx. 0.2-0.3 cm thick. Wooden strips at the bottom and on the right (approx. 0.9 cm) were added at a later date as part of a lattice attached to the reverse.
Preparatory layers The single, extremely thin, brownish-grey ground extends up the edges of the support. It contains large white, black and red pigment 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. The first lay-in was executed in subdued greyish-brown tones and the composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, leaving the figures in reserve. The brownish areas are thin and rather transparent, whereas the lighter and coloured parts are more opaque and dense. The painting was worked up in detail with an efficient use of many tiny brushstrokes. A cross-section shows that the sky seen through the window on the left consists of a thin layer of white, blue and some black pigment particles. Infrared photography revealed that an open door and a staircase were initially planned behind the woman’s head.
Anna Krekeler, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-C-200/1-2, 16 June 2008
technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 16 June 2008
infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 17 June 2008

Condition

Good. The copper plate shows some deformation, especially at the corners. Cross-sections reveal a thin, green corrosion layer between the support and the ground, which has caused adhesion problems in the past. The sprayed varnish has a slightly pitted surface.

Conservation

H. Kat, 2000: complete restoration

Provenance

...; ? probate inventory, Nicolaas Cornelis Hasselaar (1703-1741), Amsterdam, 12 May 1736, in the front room;¹? his sale, Amsterdam (R. and J. Otten), 26 April 1742, no. 8 (‘Een zeer Capitaal Binnenhuis met 10 Beeldjes, verbeeldende een Herberg, door Adriaan van Ostade geschilderd Ao. 1662 [...], hoog 1 voet 3 en een half duim, breed 1 voet 1 en een half duim [37 x 32 cm]’), fl. 430;²...; sale, Jean de Jullienne (1686-1766, Paris), Paris (P. Remy et al.), 30 March 1767 sqq., no. 153 (‘Un Tableau peint en 1661, d’un sublime mérite & d’un beau clair-obscur: on voit dans une chambre, proche de la cheminée, une femme, un enfant & trois hommes, qui tiennent chacun une pipe; un quatrieme en tient une aussi & un pot; il est assis dans la cheminée. Au fond, de cette chambre, à la droite, proche d’une croisée, sont une femme & deux hommes debout, deux autres assis à table. Ce morceau est sur cuivre; il porte 13 pouces de haut, sur 17 de large [35 x 46 cm].’), 7,410 livres, to Béatrix de Choiseul-Stainville (1730-94), Duchesse de Gramont, Paris;³ her brother, Etienne-François (1719-1785), Duc de Choiseul, Paris; his sale, Paris (J.F. Boileau), 1 (6) April 1772 sqq., no. 42 (‘Ce beau tableau représente l’intérieur d’une Maison de Paysans; quatre figures principales ornent le devant de la chambre; l’une d’elle a le dos tourné à la cheminée, tient un pot de grais & paroît saluer la compagnie avant de boire; près d’elle est un Enfant devant un billot sur lequel il mange sa soupe, il parle à un Chien qui le regarde; dans le fond qui indique une seconde chambre se voyent près d’une fenêtre plusieurs autres figures assises & debout occupées à fumer leurs pipes; le reste de la chambre & la terrasse sont infiniment ornés. [...] sur cuivre 17 pouces & demi de large sur 12 & demi de haut [34 x 47.5 cm].’), 8,799.19 livres, to the dealer Louis-François-Jacques Boileau;⁴...; ? sale, Madame du Barry (1743-1793), Paris, 17 March 1777, 7,250 livres;⁵...; sale, Servad, Amsterdam (C. Ploos van Amstel et al.), 25 June 1778, no. 62 (‘Op koper, hoog 14½, br. 18 duim [37 x 46 cm] ’t Binnengezicht van een Boere Herberg; voor een Schoorsteen, aan de linkerhand, staat met de rug naar ’t vuur gekeerd, een boer met een steene kan in de linker hand, als gereed om te drinken, in de regter op zyn rug, houd hy een Pyp; hy schynd tegen een gezelschap, bestaande in een Vrouw en een Man, die zyn Pyp stopt en aan den Haard gezeteen zyn, nevens een oud Man, die op een houte Haardstoel zyn armen legt en daar agter staat, te spreken [...] op de hoogerhand van de Vrouw [...] zit een anderen Boer Meisje voor een Hakblok, waar op een Potje met Bry staat; zy schept met haar linker hand in dit Potje, en ziet terwyl over haar regter schouder naar een zwart en wit harig gevlakten Hond, die haar van de Spys iets schynt of te troggelen, alles word [...] door een Venster zydelings verlicht: naar agteren verneemt men in de sombre wyking, verscheiden rookende, spelende en drinkende Perszoonen, aan een glas Raam, waar door men Boerenhuizen en Geboomten ziet [...].’), fl. 2,900, to the dealer Pierre Fouquet Jr;⁶...; sale, Claude Tolozan (1728-1796, Paris), Paris (A. Paillet and H. Delaroche), 23 (25) February 1801 sqq., no. 79 (‘L’intérieur d’une chambre rustique et d’un ménage hollandais, où sont rassemblés divers personnages [...]. Devant une cheminée de cuisine, on voit un paysan en veste bleuâtre, le chapeau sur l’oreille, tenant un pot à bière dans sa main droite, et semblant causer avec une bonne ménagère, ainsi qu’un homme coiffé d’un bonnet fourré, près d’un autre assis, drapé d’un manteau, et occupé à charger sa pipe, ayant une canette dans ses jambes. A droite de la cheminée, on voit encore avec intérêt une petite fille qui mange sa soupe, étant debout devant un billot, et regardant un joli chien épagneul; la partie gauche, dans un plan éloigné, laisse distinguer cinq figures, hommes et femmes, partie à une table, et occupés à boire et à fumer. [...] il suffit [...] de reporter les curieux à la fameuse vente de Julienne et à celle de Choiseuil. Sur cuivre haut de 13½ large de 17 pouces [35 x 46 cm].’), fr. 7,025, to Baron Dominique Vivant Denon (1747-1825), for Joséphine Bonaparte (1763-1814), Impératrice de France;⁷ recorded in her collection at Malmaison, 1811;⁸ her probate inventory, Malmaison, 1814, no. 1039 (‘Item un tableau représentant Intérieur de ménage hollandais, prisé trois mille francs ci 3000’);⁹...; collection Charles Ferdinand d’Artois (1778-1820), Duc de Berry, Paris;¹⁰ sale, his dowager, Marie-Caroline de Bourbon (1798-1870, Paris), Duchesse de Berry, London (Christie’s), April 1834, no. 99 (‘In the Interior of a Cabaret. By the side of a chimney, the hostess is seated, leaning carelessly on a long wooden settle, on the back of which an old man is leaning; he is smoking, and seems to suspend his operations to join in the conversation. In the fore-ground another man, with his hat on and covered with a large bluish mantle, is filling his pipe, seated in a low chair; a third is standing warming his back before the fire, and is raising to his lips a jug; a little girl is eating soup out of a porringer placed on a block of wood; a dog is watching her attentively. In the back-ground, near an open window, three men are seated at a table smoking, and two others are standing conversing together. [...] It bears date 1661 [...] On panel 14½’’ h x 18½’’ [37 x 47 cm].’), £800, to Albertus Brondgeest, for Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam;¹¹ by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;¹² from which on loan to the museum since 30 June 1885¹³

Object number: SK-C-200

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

The artist

Adriaen van Ostade (Haarlem 1610 - Haarlem 1685)

Adriaen van Ostade was the fifth child of the weaver Jan Hendricx van Ostade and Janneke Hendricx. He was baptized in the Reformed Church in Haarlem on 19 December 1610. According to Houbraken, whose information may not be reliable, he was a pupil of Frans Hals at the same time as Adriaen Brouwer. While Hals left no discernable imprint on his oeuvre, the influence of Brouwer, who lived in Haarlem from 1623/24 to 1631/32, is very apparent in Van Ostade’s early work. His activity as an artist is documented only in 1632, when he had already reached the age of 22. Peasants Playing Cards from a year later is Van Ostade’s earliest signed and dated picture.¹⁴ He first appears on the Guild of St Luke’s contribution list in 1634. On 30 March 1640, in settlement of a debt to Salomon van Ruysdael, the Court of Petty Sessions ordered him to pay three days’ worth of board at a guilder a day and to spend five hours producing a painting with a value of seven guilders. It is not known whether Adriaen van Ostade himself had lived in Van Ruysdael’s house and received instruction from him.

Van Ostade married twice, first to Machteltje Pietersdr, who was a Catholic, so he probably converted to her religion at the time of their wedding in 1638. Fifteen years after Machteltje’s death in 1642, Anna Ingels became his wife, a scion of a prominent Amsterdam Catholic family. The painter spent his entire life in his native city and appears to have been relatively well-off. In 1647 and 1662, he served as warden of the Guild of St Luke, and in 1662-63 as dean. From 1633 to 1669 he was a member of the third platoon of the second company of the St George Civic Guard. Living to the age of 74, Van Ostade had a long and productive career. He was interred in the family grave in the Grote Kerk in Haarlem on 2 May 1685.

Several hundred paintings by Adriaen van Ostade have survived, mostly depictions of peasant life but also a few landscapes, biblical scenes and portraits. More than 400 drawings, including over 50 detailed watercolours executed in the period 1672-84, have been preserved. A renowned printmaker in his own day, 50 of his etchings have come down to us. The Haarlem landscape artist Evert Adriaensz Oudendijck is recorded as his apprentice in 1663. According to Houbraken, Van Ostade’s younger brother Isack (1621-1649) was also his pupil, as were Jan Steen (1626-1679), Cornelis Bega (c. 1631-1664), Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705) and Cornelis Dusart (1660-1704). Van Gool also mentions that Willem Doudyns (1630-1697) trained with him.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, p. 258; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, I, Amsterdam 1718, pp. 347-49; 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, p. 359; A.P. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gilde aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 170-74; Fritz in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXVI, Leipzig 1932, pp. 74-75; A. Bredius, ‘Een en ander over Adriaen van Ostade’, Oud Holland 56 (1939), pp. 241-47; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, 2 vols., Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, passim; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, I, Hamburg 1981, pp. 28-33, 36-47; Schnackenburg in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, XXIII, New York 1996, pp. 609-12; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 258-60; A. Ebert, Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, pp. 19-22; Seelig in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XCIII, Munich/Leipzig 2017, pp. 528-30

Entry

This cosy interior of convivial peasants gathered around a hearth in an inn held a great attraction for a number of important eighteenth and nineteenth-century French and Dutch collectors, including Jean de Jullienne, the Duc de Choiseul, Claude Tolozan, and last but not least Adriaan van der Hoop.¹⁵ The painting was also owned by royalty: Empress Joséphine Bonaparte and later Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, son of Charles X of France. The critics John Smith and Théophile Thoré, who praised it with the words ‘superlative’ and ‘première beauté!’, were obviously impressed as well.¹⁶ Adriaen van Ostade’s peasant scenes from the 1660s form the high point of his career, and this one of 1661 has often been called the finest of them all.

The interior, consisting of a diagonally placed side wall, a back wall and a ceiling, is essentially the same as that in Van Ostade’s paintings from the late 1640s and the 1650s, but as becomes apparent when it is compared to The Skaters from around 1656, for example,¹⁷ the space is much deeper. Behind the group of peasants gathered around the hearth, which resembles the one in The Skaters, is another company much further back drinking beer and smoking at a table. The diminishing width of the floor and the receding lines of the flagstones, as well as the ceiling beams, are exploited to create a compelling illusion of depth. Far removed from the dramatically spot-lit interiors of Van Ostade’s earliest works, the room is also more evenly illuminated than in those from the 1650s, and the overall green-brown hue established by the floors and walls in the pictures from that decade has been superseded by a lighter, blonde tonality. The colours of the figures’ clothing and the skirt around the mantel of the fireplace are also stronger, cooler and more varied. The paint application is smoother and tighter, approaching the Feinmalerei of such Leiden artists as Gerrit Dou. Van Ostade executed the scene on a copper support, probably in order to achieve as fine a touch as possible.¹⁸

As in The Skaters, and indeed all of Van Ostade’s indoor scenes from the 1660s, there is a proliferation of painted elements littering the floor and filling every nook and cranny of the composition. It was precisely this surfeit of carefully rendered details that Houbraken praised in his enthusiastic description of Van Ostade’s work: ‘Peasant cottages, sheds, barns, and the interiors of homes in particular, with all their shabby furniture. Inns and taverns, with their entire contents, he depicted as wittily and naturally as anyone has ever done’.¹⁹

Just like in The Skaters and most of Van Ostade’s interiors since the end of the 1640s, the peasants in the present scene are well-behaved. Judging from the books on a shelf on the mantel of the fireplace and the writing on a piece of paper on the cupboard next to the fireplace, these ones may even have been able to read. Miedema raised the question whether Van Ostade’s switch from admonitory depictions of unruly bumpkins to touching, by today’s standards perhaps even sentimental, images of contented peasants and domestic tranquillity might reflect a new, positive view of the class themselves around the middle of the seventeenth century.²⁰ Contemporary inscriptions on prints by and after Van Ostade often praise their hard work, point out that moments of relaxation are well-earned, and commend their contentment with simple pleasures.²¹ Such sentiments are also to be found in poetry of the day. The change in Van Ostade’s peasant imagery has also been put down to ‘iconographic erosion’, a broader trend in Dutch genre painting away from content in favour of style. Producing for an anonymous open market had the effect that the emphasis gradually shifted from a moralizing notice to the aesthetic, formal means of art.²² An increasing civility on the part of the affluent and sophisticated owners of Van Ostade’s work may also have played a role; the initial brutish and violent peasant revelries were deemed undignified later in the century.²³ Gerard de Lairesse, for example, wrote in 1714 about such low-life subject matter: ‘[…] since we scarce see a beautiful hall, or fine apartment of any cost, that is not set out with pictures of beggars, obscenities, a Geneva-stall, tobacco-smokers, fidlers, nasty children easing nature, and other things more filthy. Who can entertain his friend or a person of repute in an apartment lying thus in a litter, or where a child is bawling, or wiping clean?’ ²⁴

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, I, London 1829, p. 112, no. 19, pp. 120-21, no. 49; ibid, IX, 1842, p. 86, no. 22; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, III, Esslingen/Paris 1910, p. 335, no. 620; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, I, Hamburg 1981, p. 32; B. Broos, Meesterwerken in het Mauritshuis, The Hague 1987, p. 247; R. Priem, Dutch Masters from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, exh. cat. Melbourne (National Gallery of Victoria) 2005, pp. 214-15; A. Ebert, Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, pp. 110, 121, 152, 157-59

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 128, no. 1075; 1903, p. 202, no. 1817; 1934, p. 216, no. 1817; 1960, p. 234, no. 1817; 1976, p. 430, no. C 200

Citation

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Adriaen van Ostade, Peasants in an Interior, 1661', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4899

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