Weaver's Workshop

1659

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 45 cm × width 55.7 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, bottom right: C. Decker.1659

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 23.5 and 21.3 cm), approx. 0.6 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled slightly at the top, more so at the bottom and on the right, and very slightly on the lower left. It has regularly spaced saw marks and is coated with wax. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1629. The panel could have been ready for use by 1638, but a date in or after 1648 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, smooth, off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of white pigment and some slightly translucent cream-coloured 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 composition was built up in only one or two thin layers, with the figures and larger objects left in reserve. The ground shows through locally in the loom, the floor, the cradle and the background on the right. The highlights and the lit part of the wall behind the loom were executed with slight impasto.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

infrared photography: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA (no image available), 2010
paint samples: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, nos. SK-A-2562/1-2, 29 April 2010
technical report: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 29 April 2010
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 30 July 2012

Condition

Poor. The paint is abraded, with slightly raised but stable paint on the higher parts of the wood grain. Alligator cracks are visible in the dark area at upper left. There are many discoloured retouchings throughout. The thick, irregular varnish has yellowed and saturates poorly.

Provenance

…; ? sale, Jacques Lenglier, Paris (J.B.P. le Brun et al.), 24 April 1786, no. 102 (‘Un intérieur de chambre de paysan, au milieu de laquelle est un métier de tixerand, où se teint un homme occupé à faire de la toile & conversant avec un autre. […] il est encore enrichi de différens accessoires qui ornent les devans & les fonds peint en 1659 sur bois. Hauteur 16 pouces, largeur 21 pouces [43.3 x 56.8 cm]’), fr. 800;¹…; collection Jean-Baptiste Pierre Lebrun (1748-1813), Paris;²…; ? sale, Prince of Wales (1762-1820), London (Christie’s), 29 June 1814, no. 45 (‘C. Decker 1659; A conversation of two weavers at the loom, an interior with various utensils’), £ 20-10-6, to Charles Spackman;³…; ? collection Anna Louisa Agatha van Winter (1793-1877), dowager of Jonkheer Willem van Loon (1794-1847), Amsterdam;⁴…; collection Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911), The Hague, as F. Decker;⁵ from whom on loan to the museum, 1907;⁶ donated from his estate to the museum, May 1912

Object number: SK-A-2562

Credit line: Gift of the heirs of C. Hoogendijk, The Hague

The artist

Cornelis Gerritsz Decker (? Haarlem c. 1615 - Haarlem 1678)

Cornelis Gerritsz Decker is first documented on 3 May 1637, when he married Jacomyna Deckers, from which it is assumed that he was born around 1615, probably in Haarlem. His name appears in the archives of the city’s Guild of St Luke as early as 2 November 1642, when he was ordered to appear before its board. The summons was repeated on 27 December and 5 January 1644. It is not known why, but Decker only officially became a member in 1646, when it was stated that he was a pupil of Salomon van Ruysdael. He was reasonably well off, and owned several properties, including two houses in the weavers’ quarter of Haarlem. He was buried in the Grote Kerk there on 24 March 1678.

Decker produced many landscapes under the influence of Van Ruysdael. His oeuvre also comprises genre scenes, mainly of weavers’ studios. He signed his pictures ‘C. Decker’, ‘Decker’ or ‘CD’, a monogram that led in the past to him being confused with the much younger Coenraet Decker (1651-1686), who was chiefly active as an engraver and etcher. The painter’s first dated work is a 1640 view of a castle near a river,⁷ and the last one is from 1671, depicting a house at the waterside.⁸

Richard Harmanni, 2022

References
R. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, I, Haarlem 1816, pp. 136-37; A. 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 Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, p. 101; A. van der Willigen, Les artistes de Harlem: Notices historiques avec un précis sur la Gilde de St. Luc, Haarlem/The Hague 1870, p. 117; A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, Leipzig/Vienna 1906, p. 388; Zoege von Manteuffel in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, VIII, Leipzig 1913, p. 541; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, I, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, pp. 601, 603, 932, 1033, 1041; Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXV, Munich/Leipzig 2000, pp. 125-26; Van Thiel-Stroman in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 137-38

Entry

Cornelis Decker painted many genre pieces in addition to his landscapes, the vast majority of them set in weavers’ workshops, of which this panel is a typical example. Other than household utensils there are the trade’s tools scattered throughout the picture. The wicker crib on the right suggests that the room was used for living as well.

It was partly as a result of the flood of immigrants from the southern Netherlands that the cloth industry in Haarlem enjoyed a boom from the 1630s on, and its bleaching fields were an international tourist attraction. In 1643 it had no fewer than 3,350 linen looms. The weavers mainly worked at home and not in large shops, as they did in Leiden. The high quality of the product made the trade the city’s showpiece.⁹ This was a key factor behind painted landscapes with bleaching fields and views in weavers’ interiors becoming typical of Haarlem. Most of the indoor scenes date from the 1650s and 60s, at the time when the cloth industry was at its height.¹⁰ There were a few other artists who made a speciality of the genre, among them Cornelis Beelt, Gillis Rombouts, Johannes Dirckz Oudenrogge and Thomas Wijck.

Decker’s earliest dated painting of the subject is from 1650,¹¹ the last one from 1663.¹² The compositions are fairly uniform. The loom usually stands on the left by a side wall with windows, as in the Rijksmuseum panel. The design of the rooms, with low beamed ceilings and windows, testifies to the influence of Adriaen van Ostade, so it is noteworthy that the two artists occasionally collaborated. For example, the figures in Decker’s weaver’s workshop in Brussels were once attributed to Van Ostade.¹³ There they are shown seated beside the loom, which is a particular feature of the early scenes. In others the man sits behind it, while a woman elsewhere in the room is tending to a child or housekeeping. The staffage is often of variable quality. The additional objects in the later paintings appear to have been inspired by Thomas Wijck, as in Decker’s last dated picture in the genre of 1663.

The figures in the Rijksmuseum panel are the largest in all such works by the artist. Their faces close together they are clearly having a conversation. However, it is doubtful that they are talking about a pattern that one of them is holding, as Heppner suggested.¹⁴ These two men are the most personal and distinctive of all Decker’s weavers.

Richard Harmanni, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J.-B.P. Lebrun, Galerie des peintres flamands, hollandais et allemands: Ouvrage enrichi de 201 planches gravées d’après les meilleurs tableaux de ces maîtres, par les plus habiles artistes de France, de Hollande et d’Allemagne […], II, Paris/Amsterdam 1792, p. 63; R. Bangel, ‘Die Sammlung Hoogendijk im Rijksmuseum’, Der Cicerone 7 (1915), pp. 171-89, esp. pp. 180-81; A. Heppner, ‘Cornelis Deckers Innenraumdarstellungen’, in H. Schlunk et al., Adolph Goldschmidt zu seinem siebenzigsten Geburtstag am 15. Januar 1933, dargebracht von allen seinen Schülern, die in den Jahren 1922 bis 1933 bei ihm gehört und promoviert haben, Berlin 1935, pp. 155-57, esp. p. 156; A. Heppner, Weverswerkplaatsen, geschilderd door Haarlemsche meesters der 17e eeuw, Haarlem 1938, p. 18; C. Brown, ‘...Niet ledighs of ydels...’: Nederlandse genreschilders uit de 17e eeuw, Amsterdam 1984, p. 192

Collection catalogues

1912, p. 351, no. 768A; 1960, p. 81, no. 768 B 1; 1976, p. 189, no. A 2562

Citation

Richard Harmanni, 2022, 'Cornelis Gerritsz Decker, Weaver's Workshop, 1659', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8270

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