Support The single, vertically grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 1 cm thick. The left edge seems to have been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has plane marks and a small area with regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1638. The plank could have been ready for use by 1650, but a date in or after 1657 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends over the edges of the support at the top and bottom and on the right, but not over the one on the left. The first, semi-translucent off-white layer primarily fills the grain of the wood. The second, warm grey layer contains white, fine reddish-brown and some black pigment particles. Brushstrokes, probably of the second layer, are clearly visible through the paint layers, especially in the area around the dog.
Underdrawing Infrared reflectography revealed thin perspective lines in a dry medium, some also visible to the naked eye, mostly indicating the floor tiles and the wooden panelling on the left. A horizontal line in the vista, underneath the paint of the buildings and the bridge, running almost level with its deck, seems to indicate the horizon. The underdrawing for the tiles was not precisely followed in the painting phase.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support at the top and bottom and on the right, but not over the one on the left. A semi-translucent brown first lay-in was applied sketchily with reserves for the figures and dog, and is visible at the contours of the man and woman. The composition was built up largely from the front to the back. The sky and lighter part of the wall were underpainted with a cool, light bluish grey, the upper part of the wall and the floor with a warm brown. The paint was applied fairly smoothly, with the exception of textured areas such as the dog’s coat and the velvet pile in the man’s clothing. Brushmarking was also left to play a role in certain highlights, for example in the white cloth in the right foreground. Final details were added with wet-in-wet blending. Infrared reflectography revealed several changes, some of which have become visible to the naked eye. An earlier painted version of the row of buildings in the vista initially extended further to the right, the initial position of the man’s left wrist and fingers of his right hand was slightly different, as were the contours of the woman’s right shoulder and left arm, the neckline of her dress was first placed further down, the jar on the table was originally a larger pitcher with a spout and handle, and the red pillow was smaller on the left side.
Laurent Sozzani, 2011 / additions by Esther van Duijn, 2014

Fair. The paint is abraded throughout. A few areas with fine drying cracks are visible, especially in the man’s jacket and the neck of the lute. The thick varnish has yellowed.

…; ? anonymous sale, Amsterdam (Hendrik de Leth), 17 April 1758, no. 38 (‘Een dito [binnekamertje], zynde een Heer op de Luyt speelende, en een Juffertje aan een Tafel zittende’), fl. 51;¹¹Hofstede de Groot notes, RKD; the catalogue could not be located. This and the following three entries (sales 1774, 1789, 1810) were provided by Peter Sutton, 25 May 1983; note RMA.…; sale, Frans van de Velde (†), Amsterdam (C. Ploos van Amstel et al.), 7 September 1774, no. 119 (‘Hoog 19½ Breed 14¾ duim [50.1 x 37.9 cm]. Paneel. In dit Stuk is verbeeldt een Heer, zittende op een’ Stoel aan het eind van een open Gaandery, tegen een opgeschooven rood Gordyn; hy heeft zyn regter been op zyne linker knie en speeld op een Guitar: eene Jonge dame, aandagtig luisterende, zit met het hoofd op haare linker hand rustende aan eene Tafel, gedekt met een Tapyt en een Tafellaken daar over heen, waarop een Glas met rooden Wyn voor haar staat, en voorts een Porcelyne Schaal met Persiken, Druiven, Nooten en andere Fruiten, een opgesneeden Brood, een Kan, een tin Bord enz, gezien worden; een Taboret met een rood Kussen, waarop een Servet legt, staat op den Voorgrond; onder de Tafel zit eene Kat, en een langhaarige bruingevlakte Hond legt voor de voeten van zyn’ Meester; door de opening, ter linker zyde, ziet men de Huizen van eene Stads Graft, en eene Brug in het Verschiet […]), fl. 500, to Klokker;²²Copy RKD.…; sale, Nicolaas Doekscheer (1706-1789, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 9 September 1789, no. 61 (Paneel. Hoog 20, breed 15 duim [51.4 x 38.6 cm]. Een binnenvertrek, waarin zich vertoont een deftig gekleed heer, zittende met het eene been over ’t andere, en met een groote ingespannenheid van aandacht op den citer te speelen; terwyl hy zyn oog slaat op het muziekboek ’t welk by hem op den tafel legt; deze is voorzien van een porceleinen schaal met druiven en persikken, wynkan, glas, enz. Aan zyn zyde zit een jonge juffer, leunende met de elleboog op den tafel, en het hoofd op de hand rustende, die met veel aandacht naar dit muziek schynt te luisteren. Op den voorgrond ligt een langhairige patryshond, en onder de tafel een kat. Terwyl het vertrek met het verdere nodige bywerk gestoffeerd is. Ter zyde ziet men over een balustrade een burgwal, langs welke verscheiden huizen staan; en een brug in ’t verschiet […]’), fl. 431, to Van der Schley;³³Copy RKD.…; sale, Pieter de Smeth van Alphen (1753-1809, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 1 August 1810, no. 129 (‘hoog 19, breed 15½ duimen [48.8 x 39.8 cm]. Paneel. In eene Kamer voor een open venster zit een vrolijk Man op de Luit te spelen, nevens hem eene deftige Vrouw, rustende met haren linkerarm op eene Tafel, waarop een Schotel met Vruchten, op den voorgrond liggen een Hond en eene Kat’), fl. 315, to Adriaan de Lelie;⁴⁴Copy RKD.…; collection Johannes Rombouts (1772-1850), Dordrecht;⁵⁵[P.L. Dubourcq], Beschrijving der schilderijen op ’s Rijks Museum te Amsterdam met fac simile der naamteekens, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1870, pp. 253-54, no. LXII. his nephew, Leendert Dupper Willemsz (1799-1870), Dordrecht, 1850;⁶⁶C. von Lützow, ‘Die vormals Dupper’sche Sammlung’, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 5 (1870), pp. 227-30, esp. p. 228. by whom bequeathed to the museum, with 63 other paintings, 12 April 1870⁷⁷NHA, ARM, IS, inv. 30, nos. 123 (8 March 1870), 132 (25 April 1870, no. 245); NHA, ARM, Kop., inv. 39, pp. 62-63 (11 May 1870). For the painting’s provenance see also L. Meerman, ‘An Unwritten Chapter of Dutch Collecting History: The Painting Collection of Pieter de Smeth van Alphen (1753-1809)’, Simiolus 40 (2018), pp. 18-98, esp. p. 97, no. 129.

Object number: SK-A-495

Credit line: Dupper Wzn. Bequest, Dordrecht

A colourfully dressed man with a red bonnet, blue stockings and pink ribbons and bows is playing a double-headed lute,¹⁰¹⁰With many thanks to Giovanni Paolo Di Stefano, RMA, for the identification of the instrument, which is referred to as a lute, guitar and cittern in eighteenth and nineteenth-century auction catalogues (see Provenance). while a woman seated at a table watches him attentively. He looks down at a music book on the table, and his open mouth suggests that he is singing. The room is a strange hybrid. The right half resembles an ordinary Dutch interior but the loggia with a wooden panelling on the left is clearly imaginary. Hanging on the back wall is a painting of Pyramus and Thisbe.¹¹¹¹It is not known whether this is a reproduction of a real painting, but the composition is similar to a print by Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630), no. 32 in a series of Ovid’s Metamorphoses; illustrated in S. Buffa (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, New York 1983, p. 25, no. 669.

The figures do bear comparison with a lute player and a young woman in a more elaborate composition by Hendrick Martensz Sorgh from the same year.¹²¹²Present whereabouts unknown; sale, New York (Sotheby’s), 26 January 2011, no. 44; illustrated in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, exh. cat. Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art)/Berlin (Gemäldegalerie)/London (Royal Academy of Arts) 1984, p. 303. In the Rijksmuseum picture, he has removed them from that more crowded group and isolated them, which shows that he was searching for a new direction in his art. After years of painting peasant interiors and markets he was now trying to make his own contribution to the elegant genre scenes of his contemporaries in Delft and Leiden.¹³¹³In this respect L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, p. 125, singles out Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer for the subject and Frans van Mieris for the technique. For the relationship between Sorgh’s work and that of Van Mieris see also O. Naumann, Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-1681), I, Doornspijk 1981, pp. 60-61. The figure of the musician has been associated with a drawing in Haarlem that is attributed to Ludolf de Jongh,¹⁴¹⁴L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, p. 126. The drawing in Teylers Museum is illustrated in P. Schatborn, ‘Figuurstudies van Ludolf de Jongh’, Oud Holland 89 (1975), pp. 79-85, esp. p. 81. but it also recalls Jan Steen’s Self-Portrait Playing the Lute of around 1663-65 in Madrid.¹⁵¹⁵Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza; illustrated in H.P. Chapman et al., Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1996-97, p. 181. Another work by Steen that should be mentioned is a picture in Enschede from around the same date in which there are three figures, two of them in poses similar to those of the couple in Sorgh’s painting, although there it is the woman who is playing the instrument.¹⁶¹⁶Rijksmuseum Twenthe; illustrated in E. de Jongh, ‘Medicijn voor verdriet’, Kunstschrift 42 (1998), no. 6, pp. 44-51, esp. p. 49.

Sorgh’s scene has been interpreted in different ways. Some believe that he was warning against the dangers of improper relationships and/or carnal love, possibly with a suggestive, ironic wink.¹⁷¹⁷For that discussion see E. de Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1976, pp. 229-31; K. Hazelzet-van der Linden and P. Knolle, ‘Tot lering en vermaak’, Spiegel Historiael 12 (1977), pp. 116-20; E. de Jongh, ‘De heidense poëet gekerstend en gemoraliseerd’, Kunstschrift 37 (1993), no. 5, pp. 15-22, esp. p. 20. The lesson to be drawn from the image of the ill-starred Pyramus and Thisbe on the wall would have served as an extra deterrent. The distinctive pose of the seated woman has been related to melancholia,¹⁸¹⁸E. de Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1976, p. 229. For this association see J.B. Bedaux, ‘Minnekoorts-, zwangerschaps- en doodsverschijnselen op zeventiende-eeuwse schilderijen’, Antiek 10 (1975), pp. 17-42. to which it could be added that the man with his musical instrument evokes associations with the sanguine temperament.¹⁹¹⁹Cesare Ripa, for instance, illustrated the sanguine temperament with a young man playing a lute, reproduced in H.P. Chapman et al., Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1996-97, p. 182.

Other authors have stressed the painting’s humorous nature. Schneeman, for example, believed that Sorgh was illustrating the old adage ‘Amor docet musicam’ (Love teaches music) in a light-hearted and ironic way.²⁰²⁰L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, pp. 126-30. Schadee in N.I. Schadee (ed.), Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Historisch Museum) 1994, p. 230, note 3, draws particular attention to the irony in the painting. Franits regarded it as a comic scene of a dandified musician who is trying in vain to impress the young woman. According to him, the image of Pyramus and Thisbe should be seen in the light of the contemporary reception of the classical story, and in particular of the farce that the playwright Matthijs Gramsbergen published on the subject in 1650.²¹²¹W.E. Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution, New Haven/London 2004, pp. 191-93. Given the man’s extraordinary outfit and the stagy setting, it does indeed seem likely that Sorgh’s picture is meant to be humorous rather than cautionary.

This unusual work inspired a number of other artists to make variants or copies of it.²²²²L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, pp. 228-29, mentions two variants and three copies. For example, an eighteenth-century auction catalogue lists an arched painting with a description that closely matches the Rijksmuseum picture, but which was sold for such a low price that it is not likely to have been by Sorgh.²³²³Sale, Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 17 April 1783, no. 209: ‘Op Paneel. h. 22 br. 14 duim (56.5 x 36 cm). Dit Stuk van boven Toogsgewijze, verbeeld in een gemeubileerd Vertrek een Dame zittende bij een gedekte Tafel, waar op een Schotel met Vrugten staat, benevens Brood en een Wynkan; ter zyde zit een vroolyke Knaap op de Guitard speelende waar naar zy aandachtig luisterd; door een open Vengster ziet men eenige Gebouwen en Tuingezigt (…)’, fl. 11, to Fouquet. This may have been the same painting as the one listed in the Provenance as changing hands at an auction in 1758. In Dordrecht there is a watercolour after Interior with a Lute Player made by Leendert Dupper Willemsz at the time when the original was still in the collection of his uncle Johannes Rombouts (1772-1850),²⁴²⁴Dordrechts Museum; C. Jonges, ‘Leender Dupper Wz.: Een belangrijke Dordtse verzamelaar’, Bulletin Dordrechts Museum 29 (2004), pp. 14-15, esp. p. 15 (ill.). and in 1928 Joan Miró gave Sorgh’s painting a Surrealist twist.²⁵²⁵New York, The Museum of Modern Art; illustrated in P. de Haan and L. van Halem, ‘Miró in Holland: The Dutch Interiors (1928)’, The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 58 (2010), pp. 210-45, esp. p. 213.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

E. de Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1976, pp. 229-31; L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, pp. 125-30, 227-29, no. 66; E. de Jongh, ‘De heidense poëet gekerstend en gemoraliseerd’, Kunstschrift 37 (1993), no. 5, pp. 15-22, esp. p. 20; Schadee in N.I. Schadee (ed.), Rotterdamse meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Historisch Museum) 1994, p. 230, no. 53; W.E. Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution, New Haven/London 2004, pp. 191-92

1870, pp. 253-54, no. LXII; 1880, p. 286, no. 332; 1887, p. 159, no. 1346; 1903, p. 248, no. 2213; 1934, p. 265, no. 2213; 1976, p. 517, no. A 495

Gerdien Wuestman, 2026, 'Hendrick Martensz Sorgh, Interior with a Lute Player, 1661', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200107992