Object data
oil on panel
support: height 40 cm × width 32.2 cm × thickness 0.6 cm
outer size: depth 6 cm
Adriaen van Ostade (copy after)
A Woman Gutting Herrings in front of her House
1678
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower left, on the hutch (false): AV. Ostade 1648
- date, centre right, on a piece of paper: 1678
Technical notes
Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 0.5 cm thick on the left and approx. 0.8 cm on the right. The reverse is bevelled at the bottom and on the left, and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1611. The panel could have been ready for use by 1620, but a date in or after 1630 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, pinkish ground extends over the edges of the support. It consists of white pigment and a minute amount of very small 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 of the figures was done with a rather transparent brown paint, which has remained visible in the man’s right leg and the shadow he casts on the ground, and along the contours of the woman’s skirt. The composition was built up from dark to light, leaving the figures in reserve. Areas of lighter colours are more dense and opaque, while in some of the brown areas the paint was very thinly applied, allowing the ground to show through. The light blue sky seems to consist of a pinkish layer with mainly white and some large red pigment particles. In a final stage the treetop was added over the wooden upper part of the house. The paint surface is fairly smooth, with only some impasto in the foliage.
Anna Krekeler, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder / M. van de Laar, RMA, 15 June 1998
- infrared photography: A. Krekeler, RMA, 20 June 2008
- paint samples: A. Krekeler, RMA, nos. SK-C-564/1-2, 3 July 2008
- technical report: A. Krekeler, RMA, 3 July 2008
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 12 December 2010
Condition
Good. The paint layer has some minute losses. The varnish is thick and has yellowed severely, and saturates poorly.
Provenance
...; ? sale, Seger Tierens (1657-1743, The Hague), The Hague (auction house not known), 23 July 1743, no. 171, as Adriaen van Ostade (‘Une Femme assise devant sa Maison, mangeant du Hareng & causant avec son Voisin, par le même [Adriaen van Ostade], haut un pied trois & demi pouces, large un pied & un demi pouce [40.5 x 32.7 cm].’), fl. 76;1…; bequeathed by Margaretha Catharina Messchert van Vollenhoven, née Van Lennep (1815-1891), Amsterdam, to the City of Amsterdam, as Adriaen van Ostade, 1892; from which on loan to the museum since 1892
Object number: SK-C-564
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam
Copyright: Public domain
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.2 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
Hofstede de Groot was the first to demote this painting to the status of a copy in an article in Oud Holland.3 Adriaen van Ostade employed the composition in five original works, an undated etching,4 two drawings5 and two watercolours.6 The Rijksmuseum copy is closest to the watercolour in Musée Condé in Chantilly.7 The most significant contrast to that French original is the activity performed by the seated peasant woman. In the present scene she is gutting a herring, while in Van Ostade’s watercolour she is winding a skein of yarn. The clothing and its colours are also different, as is the stance of the chicken in the foreground.
As Hofstede de Groot also pointed out, the date of 1648 on the lower part of the hutch on the left does not reflect the period in which the Chantilly watercolour was made. The latter belongs to Van Ostade’s late work from after 1670.8 The inscription ‘AV. Ostade 1648’ was probably added to the painting later on, as another year, 1678, appears on a piece of paper appended to the window on the right, which corresponds better with the watercolour’s time of execution.
Another painted copy after Van Ostade’s composition, in which the woman is winding a skein of yarn as in the original, was auctioned at Sotheby’s in Amsterdam in 2002.9 Attributed to Cornelis Dusart by Fred Meijer, that copy is superior to the present one in the Rijksmuseum and is obviously by a different hand.10
Jonathan Bikker, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
Verslagen omtrent ’s Rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1892 (annual report of the Rijksmuseum), p. 15 (as Adriaen van Ostade); C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Kritische opmerkingen omtrent eenige schilderijen in ’s Rijksmuseum’, Oud Holland 17 (1899), pp. 163-70, esp. p. 169; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, III, Esslingen/Paris 1910, pp. 239-40, no. 311a; Slatkes in S.W. Pelletier, L.J. Slatkes and L.A. Stone-Ferrier, Adriaen van Ostade: Etchings of Peasant Life in Holland’s Golden Age, exh. cat. Athens (Georgia Museum of Art)/Lawrence (Spencer Museum of Art)/Ann Arbor (University of Michigan Musuem of Art) 1994-95, p. 144
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 202, no. 1821 (as Adriaen van Ostade); 1976, p. 431, no. C 564
Citation
Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'copy after Adriaen van Ostade, A Woman Gutting Herrings in front of her House, 1678', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4908
(accessed 13 November 2024 02:46:04).