Pharaoh's Daughter Discovers Moses in the Rush Basket

Guilliam du Gardijn, c. 1615 - c. 1630

Farao's dochter en haar dienstmaagden vinden Mozes in het biezen mandje bij de begroeide oever van de Nijl. Twee dienstmaagden halen het kind uit het water. De prinses staat onder een parasol en wijst naar het kind.

  • Artwork typepainting
  • Object numberSK-A-1572
  • Dimensionsouter size: depth 3 cm (support incl. frame), support: height 75.7 cm x width 109.5 cm
  • Physical characteristicsoil on panel

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An Italian Galley, with the Stern to the Left/ verso: An Italian Gallery with the Bow to the Left, and Several Figure Sketches

Guilliam du Gardijn, 1605 - 1647

An Italian Galley, with the Stern to the Left/ verso: An Italian Gallery with the Bow to the Left, and Several Figure Sketches

View of the Baths of Caracalla, Rome, with a Large Boulder in the Foreground / verso: View of Classical Ruins

Guilliam du Gardijn, c. 1620 - c. 1625

View of the Baths of Caracalla, Rome, with a Large Boulder in the Foreground / verso: View of Classical Ruins

Turkish Soldiers around a Camp Fire

Guilliam du Gardijn, 1605 - 1647

Turkish Soldiers around a Camp Fire

Harbour Scene with an Obelisk Being Transported on a Wooden Raft

Guilliam du Gardijn, 1605 - 1647

Harbour Scene with an Obelisk Being Transported on a Wooden Raft

View in a Cave and View of a Classical Ruin

Guilliam du Gardijn, c. 1620 - c. 1625

View in a Cave and View of a Classical Ruin

View of the Baths of Caracalla, Rome, with Distinguished Visitors and a Coach

Guilliam du Gardijn, 1625 - 1630

View of the Baths of Caracalla, Rome, with Distinguished Visitors and a Coach

Guilliam du Gardijn

Pharaoh’s Daughter Discovers Moses in the Rush Basket

c. 1615 - c. 1630

Inscriptions

  • signature, bottom centre:G. Du. Gardin

Technical notes

The support consists of four horizontally grained oak planks and is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1598. The panel could have been ready for use by 1609, but a date in or after 1615 is more likely. The colour of the ground is white. The paint layers were applied smoothly, without noticeable brushmarking. The figures, horses and carriage in the right background were sketched in black paint over the dead-colouring. Incising with the butt end of the brush is visible in the bundle of reeds in the right foreground.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 23 oktober 2004
  • dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 oktober 2005

Condition

Fair. The joins of the panel have separated and there are three cracks, a small one at centre left, a long one at the centre running through the figures, and another long one at lower right. There are many small losses throughout and numerous small retouchings along the joins, in the sky and the figures’ faces. The varnish has discoloured significantly.

Provenance

...; donated to the museum by Dr Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), The Hague, February 18921RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 172, no. 19 (27 February 1892).

Object number: SK-A-1572

Credit line: Gift of A. Bredius, The Hague

The artist

Biography

Guilliam du Gardijn (? Cologne c. 1596/97 - ? Amsterdam in or after 1647)

The year of Guilliam du Gardijn’s birth is based on information contained in the 1618 document recording his first marriage to Jannetjen Ysbrants in Amsterdam, and other documents. It is most often claimed in his modern biographies that he was born in Cologne, but the basis for this supposition is not known. After the death of his first wife, Du Gardijn married Annetje Vermouw in 1639. According to records of the consistory of the Reformed Church in Amsterdam he briefly converted from Catholicism in order to do so. The same records inform us that he subjected his second wife to repeated beatings.

Nothing is known about Du Gardijn’s training, and his known oeuvre is rather small, consisting of only two signed paintings on panel, two on paper, and a number of chalk and wash drawings showing views of Rome, grottoes, and ships in the style of Cornelis van Poelenburch and Bartholomeus Breenbergh. These drawings, and the Italian paper on which they were made, suggest that Du Gardijn travelled to Italy. The German painter Johan Hendrick Roos (1631-85) is recorded as his pupil in 1647. After that date, there are no known documents that mention Du Gardijn. It has sometimes been mistakenly claimed in the literature that he was the father of Karel Dujardin.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Kramm III, 1859, pp. 804-05; De Vries 1885, p. 143; Bredius 1890, pp. 233-34; Von Wurzbach I, 1906, p. 435; Plietzsch in Thieme/Becker X, 1914, p. 102; Roodenburg 1990, pp. 158-59; Ro¨mer in Saur XXX, 2001, p. 421; Schatborn in Amsterdam 2001, p. 74

Entry

This Discovery of Moses is one of only two known paintings by Du Gardijn executed directly on panel.2There are no known paintings on canvas. The Stedelijk Museum, Alkmaar, has two paintings on paper attached to panel by him. For the paintings on paper see De Vrij 1995. Both are history paintings.3The other painting executed directly on panel is King David Playing the Harp before the Ark of the Covenant in the House of Obed-edom The Gittite: sale, New York (Christie’s), 4 October 1996, no. 60 (ill.). The rather unaccomplished figures in the present painting show the influence of Lastman and Jacob Pynas, as do such motifs as the umbrella in the centre of the composition and the acanthus at the lower right. The landscape has little in common with Du Gardijn’s works on paper that include landscape elements. The short strokes, many of them white highlights on the trees at the right of the picture, however, are also found, and to a much greater degree, in a very strange anthropomorphic landscape executed by Du Gardijn now in Alkmaar.4Stedelijk Museum; illustrated in coll. cat. Alkmaar 1997, p. 140. This stylistic feature may also have been derived from the work of Jacob Pynas.

Jonathan Bikker, 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. 76.

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 88, no. 826; 1976, p. 203, no. A 1572; 2007, no. 76

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Guilliam du Gardijn, Pharaoh’s Daughter Discovers Moses in the Rush Basket, c. 1615 - c. 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027826

(accessed 8 December 2025 19:11:26).

Footnotes

  • 1RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 172, no. 19 (27 February 1892).
  • 2There are no known paintings on canvas. The Stedelijk Museum, Alkmaar, has two paintings on paper attached to panel by him. For the paintings on paper see De Vrij 1995.
  • 3The other painting executed directly on panel is King David Playing the Harp before the Ark of the Covenant in the House of Obed-edom The Gittite: sale, New York (Christie’s), 4 October 1996, no. 60 (ill.).
  • 4Stedelijk Museum; illustrated in coll. cat. Alkmaar 1997, p. 140.