The Musical Gathering

The support is a horizontally grained oak plank with a vertically grained strip of 1.7 cm added on the left. Losses under the paint layers reveal that the plank had been used before, possibly for a piece of furniture. It is bevelled on all sides and has been cradled. A white ground was applied over a greenish ground layer. Some underdrawing is visible in the figures. The paint was applied very smoothly.

Fair. There are two old horizontal cracks in the panel, and the varnish has yellowed slightly.

...; from J.F. Laisney, Paris, fl. 750, as Johann Liss, to the museum, May 1887;¹¹RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 167, no. 151 (17 March 1887); RANH, ARS, Kop, inv. 289, p. 132, no. 291 (5 April 1887). on loan to the Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, Muiden, 1922-80, and again since 1985

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1403

There are vague traces of an inscription on the horizontal piece of wood between the legs of the chair in the centre. According to old collection catalogues it originally read: ‘J. Lijs 1625’, but that had already disappeared when the painting was restored in 1981.²²Verslagen 1982, p. 16. It is possible that it was thought to be false during some previous treatment and removed. Johann Liss, who worked in Italy from 1621 until his death in 1629, was certainly not the artist.

Hofstede de Groot had published this painting back in 1901 as a copy after a work by Willem Cornelisz Duyster that was then in the Lenglart collection in Lille.³³Hofstede de Groot 1901, pp. 135-36. That painting, a typical Duyster, was on the art market in 2003.⁴⁴Panel, 40 x 63.5 cm; see Sutton in dealer cat. Colnaghi 2003, no. 9, with provenance. On the iconography see also Verroen in coll. cat. Muiden 1989, no. 14. Another version was auctioned in 1977 with an attribution to Dirck Hals.⁵⁵Panel, 47 x 65 cm; sale, Paris (Ader, Picard, Tajan), 8 December 1977, no. 37. That work may be identical with the panel measuring 46.5 x 64.5 cm in sale, Paris (Tajan), 30 June 2000, no. 20 (ill.), as attributed to Willem Cornelisz Duyster.

The popularity of this work is also demonstrated by the existence of several partial copies, three of which show the two figures on the left,⁶⁶Panel, 27 x 33 cm; sale, E. Strasser, Brussels (Giroux), 27 November 1936, no. 446, as by Palamedesz (ill.); panel, 35 x 26 cm; sale, Vienna (Kende), 22 April 1929, no. 168 (ill.), as by Dusart; panel, 35 x 26 cm; sale, Vienna (Dorotheum), 11 June 1996, no. 279 (ill.), as copy after Duyster. one of the woman with the songbook,⁷⁷Panel, 20.3 x 18.6 cm; sale, London (Sotheby’s), 30 October 1994, no. 194 (ill.), as attributed to Codde. and one with just the lutenist.⁸⁸Panel, 20 x 15.6 cm, sale, New York (Sotheby’s), 30 January 1998, no. 204, as attributed to Duyster. In Lille there is a drawing of 1787 by Jean-Baptiste Wicar in which the entire scene is copied.⁹⁹Palais des Beaux Arts; photo RKD.

The copy in the Rijksmuseum was also made long after Duyster’s death, probably in the 18th or 19th century. The fact that the copyist worked on an old panel that had been used before suggests that it was intended to pass this work off as a genuine 17th-century piece.¹⁰¹⁰Oral communication, L. Sozzani, 2004.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 68.

Hofstede de Groot 1901, pp. 135-36; coll. cat. Muiden 1989, no. 14 (as manner of Duyster)

1887, p. 105, no. 879a (as Johann Liss); 1903, p. 91, no. 852; 1976, p. 351, no. A 1403 (as Johann Liss); 1992, p. 50, no. 1403; 2007, no. 68

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'copy after Willem Cornelisz. Duyster, The Musical Gathering, after 1700', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8920