Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 0.8 cm thick. The left and right edges have been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1642. The panel could have been ready for use by 1651, but a date in or after 1661 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, smooth beige ground extends over the edges of the support at the top and bottom, but not over the left and right edges. It consists of large white and some minute red and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing An underdrawing in a dry medium is partly visible with the naked eye. Infrared reflectography revealed that it defines the architectural elements, but not the perspective lines.
Paint layers Three marks made in the fresh ground and paint layers were used as an aid for the perspective. In the man’s hat in the far left an obvious indentation indicates the left vanishing point, to which most of the perspective lines of the architecture and floor lead. Another obvious dent is visible in the prominent white column in the middle, exactly halfway up the composition. A line matching the horizon line was scratched in the wet paint above the head of the woman on the right, perhaps enabling the artist to recover the horizon line after he had lost his marker. The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was laid out in grey tones before colours were added. All elements were placed neatly next to each other, sometimes leaving the underdrawing exposed. One obvious change to the design was made in the top of the white column in the middle, which was planned wider originally.
Michel van de Laar, 2022

Good. The panel is slightly warped. Numerous small details, such as the grooves in the wood of the choir railings, the signature and date, and many subtle shadows executed in a dark brown paint display alligator cracking.

…; ? sale, Jonkheer Johan Goll van Franckenstein Jr (1756-1821, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 1 July 1833 sqq., no. 34 (‘hoog 4 p. 8 d. breed 4 p. 1 d. [48 x 41 cm] Eene Protestantsche Kerk, van binnen te zien, ter zijde eene kapel met afgesloten hekwerk en beschilderde glazen’), fl. 210, to Engelberts;¹¹Copy RKD.…; collection W.P. van Lennep, Amsterdam, 1867;²²Tentoonstelling van zeldzame en belangrijke schilderijen van oude meesters, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Arti et Amicitiae) 1867, no. 80. by descent to J.F. van Lennep, Amsterdam 1890;³³Catalogus der tentoonstelling van schilderijen van oude meesters, exh. cat. The Hague (Pulchri Studio) 1890, no. 44. by descent to Margaretha Catharina Messchert van Vollenhoven, née Van Lennep (1815-1891), Amsterdam; her sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 29 March 1892, no. 4, fl. 7,500, to the Vereniging Rembrandt; from which, fl. 8,000, to the museum, June 1892

Object number: SK-A-1584

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

This Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft is typical of Gerard Houckgeest’s work and is a landmark in his oeuvre.⁷⁷W. Martin, De Hollandsche schilderkunst in de zeventiende eeuw, II, Amsterdam 1936, pp. 406-07; I. Manke, Emanuel de Witte, 1617-1692, Amsterdam 1963, p. 22; L. de Vries, ‘Gerard Houckgeest’, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 20 (1975), pp. 25-56, esp. p. 44. It is a view to the north-east showing the pulpit half-hidden by the central column.⁸⁸For the building history of the church and the pulpit see D.P. Oosterbaan, De Oude Kerk te Delft gedurende de Middeleeuwen, The Hague 1973, pp. 81-82. The picture is in a cool bright palette. The subtly coloured patches on the column created by the sun streaming in through the stained-glass windows are typical of Houckgeest’s preoccupation with lighting effects. A young woman and a man seen from the back are conversing in the foreground. The composition is framed within an arch and a trompe l’oeil curtain.

This painting is also important for an understanding of Houckgeest’s working method. In 1986 Liedtke associated it with another interior of the Oude Kerk by the artist in an English private collection (fig. a).⁹⁹W. Liedtke, ‘De Witte and Houckgeest: Two New Paintings from their Years in Delft’, The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), pp. 802-05. This work has long been attributed to Emanuel de Witte. It turned out that the present composition exactly matches the left half of that picture, which may not have been so readily apparent because of the addition of the baptistry screen in the foreground and the framing elements around the Rijksmuseum work. Liedtke has made a persuasive case that both are based on the same drawing, which also explains why the three-point perspective in the Rijksmuseum painting is eccentric, with the left-hand vanishing point near the left edge, the central one beyond the right side and the right-hand one far beyond the right edge.¹⁰¹⁰W. Liedtke, ‘De Witte and Houckgeest: Two New Paintings from their Years in Delft’, The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), pp. 802-05, esp. p. 805. A few years previously Liedtke had suggested on the basis of an analysis of this construction that the composition might be based on a sketch that was once part of a larger sheet; see W. Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte, Doornspijk 1982, p. 46, note 30. In addition to a preliminary study, the artist must have used a nail to help him draw his orthogonals, for there is a hole marking the vanishing point in the hat of the man on the left.¹¹¹¹Giltaij in J. Giltaij and G. Jansen (eds.), Perspectiven: Saenredam en de architectuurschilders van de 17e eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1991, p. 177. See also Technical notes. There are two other church interiors by Houckgeest with compositions derived from a larger whole,¹²¹²On which see W. Liedtke, ‘De Witte and Houckgeest: Two New Paintings from their Years in Delft’, The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), pp. 802-05, esp. p. 803; W. Liedtke, A View of Delft: Vermeer and his Contemporaries, Zwolle 2000, pp. 86-87. but there he zoomed in on the central subject, whereas here he divided the scene in two.

The date of this painting is open to discussion. The year, and the last digit in particular, is difficult to read. Most authors take it to be a four,¹³¹³I. Manke, Emanuel de Witte, 1617-1692, Amsterdam 1963, p. 22; Giltaij in J. Giltaij and G. Jansen (eds.), Perspectiven: Saenredam en de architectuurschilders van de 17e eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1991, p. 177; files RMA. Cf. A. Bredius, ‘De Haagsche schilders Joachim en Gerard Houckgeest’, Oud Holland 6 (1888), pp. 81-86, esp. p. 86 (‘1652 ?’). and it was also interpreted as ‘1654’ in the most recent technical examination. Liedtke believed that there could be either ‘1’ or ‘4’ at the end, and employs stylistic and other grounds to back his view that the work was probably made in Houckgeest’s Delft period, that is to say 1651.¹⁴¹⁴W. Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte, Doornspijk 1982, pp. 44-45, 100, no. 4; W. Liedtke, A View of Delft: Vermeer and his Contemporaries, Zwolle 2000, p. 119; and above all W. Liedtke, ‘Johannes Coesermans, Painter of Delft’, Oud Holland 106 (1992), pp. 191-98, esp. p. 198, note 36. However sound these arguments may be, the inscription leaves little leeway for reading the year as ‘1651’, and since the composition is based on a earlier study a slightly later date is certainly not implausible.

The tenacity with which the debate about the date is being conducted is partly due to the existence of a painting by Emanuel de Witte in Ottawa which can be placed around 1651, and has a similar composition, as well as a trompe l’oeil in the form of a green velvet curtain on the right.¹⁵¹⁵National Gallery of Canada; illustrated in W. Liedtke, A View of Delft: Vermeer and his Contemporaries, Zwolle 2000, pl. IX. I. Manke, Emanuel de Witte, 1617-1692, Amsterdam 1963, p. 22, was the first to draw a connection between the two pictures. Manke in ibid., p. 79, no. 11, dates the Ottawa work 1650-51, whereas Jansen assigns it to c. 1651-52 in J. Giltaij and G. Jansen (eds.), Perspectiven: Saenredam en de architectuurschilders van de 17e eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1991, p. 185, note 4 . Assigning the Rijksmuseum picture to 1654 could modify the prevailing opinion that it was generally Houckgeest who played a leading role. Manke and Wheelock, who both accepted the date of 1654, believed that in this event Houckgeest was influenced by his much younger colleague,¹⁶¹⁶I. Manke, Emanuel de Witte, 1617-1692, Amsterdam 1963, p. 22; A.K. Wheelock Jr, Perspective, Optics and Delft Artists around 1650, New York 1977, p. 245. while Liedtke felt that the opposite is more likely to be the case, assuming that the two works were indeed made in concert.¹⁷¹⁷W. Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte, Doornspijk 1982, pp. 45-46, note 25. For a related composition by the Delft artist Johannes Coesermans, present whereabouts unknown, see W. Liedtke, ‘Johannes Coesermans, Painter of Delft’, Oud Holland 106 (1992), pp. 191-98, esp. pp. 195-96, fig. 8. It seems fairly certain that De Witte’s painting preceded the one in the Rijksmuseum, but that does not necessarily mean that Houckgeest imitated him.¹⁸¹⁸Jansen in J. Giltaij and G. Jansen (eds.), Perspectiven: Saenredam en de architectuurschilders van de 17e eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1991, p. 185, rightly observes that the Delft artist Hendrick van Vliet, too, had already used the trompe l’oeil motif in 1652.

The tromp-l’oeil green curtain is an allusion to seventeenth-century painting practice.¹⁹¹⁹For a few surviving frames with curtain rods and mentions of curtains in seventeenth-century inventories see P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Prijst de lijst: De Hollandse schilderijlijst in de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1984, pp. 302-04. This ploy was used by many artists around the middle of the century for pictures in the most varied genres.²⁰²⁰Examples include A Man Smoking a Pipe at a Window by Gerrit Dou in the Rijksmuseum, SK-A-86. On this practice see P. Reuterswärd, ‘Tavelförhänget: Kring ett motiv i holländskt 1600-talsmåleri’, Konsthistorisk tidskrift 25 (1956), pp. 97-113, who associates pictures of this kind with the well-known anecdote by Pliny about a deceptively lifelike curtain in a work by Parrhasius – a story that must have been known to seventeenth-century Dutch painters because Karel van Mander had recounted it in his Schilder-boeck of 1604; see also Broos in B. Broos et al., Great Dutch Paintings from America, exh. cat. The Hague (Mauritshuis)/San Francisco (Fine Arts Museums) 1990-91, pp. 410-11. Houckgeest heightened the illusionistic effect by having the curtain rod cast a shadow on the wooden framing element and the church’s column and vaulting. The inclusion of the frame and the rod with the curtain turns works of this kind into ‘painted paintings’, but by applying the trick to a church interior Houckgeest also creates the idea of a glimpse through a window.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

H. Jantzen, Das niederländische Architekturbild, Leipzig 1910, p. 162, no. 172; L. de Vries, ‘Gerard Houckgeest’, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 20 (1975), pp. 25-56, esp. pp. 44-45, 52, no. 21; W. Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte, Doornspijk 1982, pp. 44-46, 100, no. 4; Liedtke in W. Liedtke et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/London (The National Gallery) 2001, pp. 303-05, no. 40, with earlier literature; A. Pollmer-Schmidt, Kirchenbilder: Der Kirchenraum in der holländischen Malerei um 1650, Kromsdorf 2017, pp. 154-56, 263, 455

1903, p. 136, no. 1260; 1934, p. 137, no. 1260; 1960, pp. 146-47, no. 1260; 1976, p. 291, no. A 1584

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'Gerard Houckgeest, Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft, with a Trompe l’Oeil Curtain, 1654', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200109395