Support The single, horizontally grained, quarter-sawn, vertical oak plank is approx. 1.1 cm thick. The bottom and top edges may have been trimmed. The reverse is bevelled on all sides, though less so at the top and bottom. Only the bottom edge has a clear saw mark. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1627. The panel could have been ready for use by 1638, but a date in or after 1644 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The thin, smooth double ground extends up to the edges of the support at the top and bottom, and over the left and right edges. The first, white layer consists of what seems to be chalk. The second ground is a warm off-white containing fine white pigment particles, and black and earth pigments.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed a few very fine, short contour lines, as well as lines defining the forms of the figure’s cuff and the floor.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support at the top and bottom, and over the left and right edges. Still visible in many places, the initial lay-in of the background and foreground was done in transparent browns with some opaque earth-coloured scumbles containing coarse white pigment particles. The composition was built up using reserves, with carefully closed edges for the figure and the book, for instance, while those for the objects in the foreground were partially left open. The legs of the chair, though, were executed over the floor’s horizontal lines. The flesh areas were underpainted with a light grey, consisting of coarse white and black pigment particles. The imaginary letters on the page of the book and the documents were meticulously applied with a fine brush in varying shades of grey and black on top of the dry underpaint. Both feet were first planned somewhat more to the left, as can be seen with the naked eye. The paint layers are very smooth.
Gwen Tauber, Michel van de Laar, 2023

Fair. There are three small, horizontal cracks in the wood close to the bottom edge and a larger one at upper right, running approx. 20 cm into the picture plane. The wood grain has become visible due to increased transparency of the ground and minor abrasion of the paint. There are discoloured retouchings, old retouched scratches and losses along the edges. One long scratch is evident below the table. The varnish, applied when the painting was framed, has severely yellowed and crazed. The current frame covers 2.2 cm of the left edge of the picture plane.

…; ? sale, Middelburg (Mattijssen), 20 April 1779, no. 124, with pendant, no. 125 (‘Spreeuwe, 1645. Twee stuks verbeeldende een Philosoph in een Binnenhuis, zittende aan een Tafel waarop een Globe en een Boek daar tegen aan en meer Bywerk; en het andere zynde een Binnenhuis, daar in een Vrouwtje met een Spinnewiel en Boek op haar Schoot en meer Bywerk, op P. yder 14 dm. breet 13 dm [36 x 33.4 cm].’);…; sale, Gijsbert de Clercq (1850-1911, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 1 June 1897, no. 93, fl. 300, to the museum, with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt; on loan to the Gallery Prince Willem V, The Hague, 1977-81

Object number: SK-A-1713

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The theme of the secular scholar in his study was developed in Leiden in the 1630s by Rembrandt, Jan Lievens, Gerrit Dou and their circle.²²H. van de Waal, ‘Rembrandt’s Faust Etching, a Socinian Document, and the Iconography of the Inspired Scholar’, Oud Holland 79 (1964), pp. 6-48, esp. p. 38. For Rembrandt’s role in the development of this genre, see the entry on A Scholar in his Study attributed to Willem de Poorter (SK-A-23). An example in Dou’s oeuvre is Old Man Lighting a Pipe, c. 1635, England, private collection; illustrated in A.K. Wheelock Jr (ed.), Gerrit Dou 1613-1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2000-01, p. 73. There are no fewer than six pictures of this subject by or attributed to Jacob van Spreeuwen, some of which include elaborate still lifes derived from Dou’s example.³³See especially the paintings by Van Spreeuwen in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston (Canada), and formerly with the Arnot Art Museum, London; illustrated in, respectively, W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, IV, Landau/Pfalz 1989, p. 2463, no. 1650a; ibid., VI, 1994, p. 4064, no. 2445. Van Spreeuwen, however, never achieved the latter’s level of detail, his thinly painted, sketchy compositions being more akin to those of another Leiden artist, Quiringh van Brekelenkam.

As Bauch was the first to point out, the pose of Van Spreeuwen’s scholar is based on Rembrandt’s 1629 An Old Man Asleep.⁴⁴K. Bauch, Der frühe Rembrandt und seine Zeit: Studien zur geschichtlichen Bedeutung seines Frühstils, Berlin 1960, p. 267, note 194. The Rembrandt is in Turin, Galleria Sabauda; illustrated in J. Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, I, The Hague/Boston/London 1982, p. 203. In ibid., p. 206, it is suggested that the pose may have been derived from a now lost drawing for Rembrandt’s picture instead of the painting itself. Both their figures have one hand tucked into their mantle or shirt and rest their weary heads on the other. Indicative of Van Spreeuwen’s limited talent is the clumsy way in which he arranged the man’s legs so that the position of his left one is unclear and the right one appears to dangle in the air. The inclusion of books and a globe also changes the iconography of Rembrandt’s elder, which was likely meant as a personification of sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. Based on the Old Testament proverb, ‘A slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again’ (Proverbs 19:24), the gesture of the hand placed within a cloak became connected with idleness since around 1200.⁵⁵See S. Koslow, ‘Frans Hals’s Fisherboys: Exemplars of Idleness’, The Art Bulletin 57 (1975), pp. 418-32. The same association goes for the way Rembrandt’s figure, his eyes shut, supports his head with his other hand. Van Spreeuwen’s greybeard may be depicted as lazy, therefore, but this pose was also used to symbolize melancholy, an affliction suffered by many a scholar in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and prints. However, the fact that Van Spreeuwen’s old man is staring ahead, so not sleeping, favours an interpretation of him as a Melancholic rather than slothful.⁶⁶For this pose and its iconography see also the entry on A Scholar in his Study attributed to Willem de Poorter (SK-A-23).

The subject of the scholar in his study originated with medieval depictions of St Jerome in his cell.⁷⁷See, for example, J. Bialostocki, ‘Books of Wisdom and Books of Vanity’, in In Memoriam J.G. van Gelder 1903-1980, Utrecht 1982, pp. 37-67, esp. p. 48. He is shown in the same melancholic pose as Van Spreeuwen’s figure in a number of sixteenth and seventeenth-century paintings and prints.⁸⁸Examples include St Jerome in his Study by Candlelight, c. 1520-30, attributed to Aertgen Claesz van Leyden (SK-A-3903) and Rembrandt’s 1642 etching St Jerome in a Dark Chamber (illustrated in S.S. Dickey (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, L, New York 1993, p. 91, no. 105). Like St Jerome in those works, Van Spreeuwen’s greybeard may be contemplating the transience of earthly existence, which is symbolized here by the globe on the table. Its presence and the scholar’s dejected air, however, would also have reminded the contemporary viewer of the classical philosopher Heraclitus, who wept at the follies of the world. Usually accompanied by his laughing colleague Democritus, Heraclitus was almost invariably depicted with a globe in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, and in several of them Heraclitus rests his weary head in his hand in order to express his melancholic state.⁹⁹On the depiction of Heraclitus in seventeenth-century Dutch art see A. Blankert, ‘Heraclitus en Democritus: In het bijzonder in de Nederlandse kunst van de 17de eeuw’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 18 (1967), pp. 31-124.

Van Spreeuwen’s Scholar in his Study is probably identical with the ‘Philosopher in an interior, sitting at a table upon which is a globe and a book resting against it’ at an auction in Middelburg in 1779.¹⁰¹⁰See Provenance. In addition to that description, the date, measurements and support recorded in the catalogue for that sale match the Rijksmuseum panel. It also listed a pendant in the form of ‘a woman with a spinning wheel and a book on her lap’.¹¹¹¹See Provenance. Unfortunately, no such picture can be found in Van Spreeuwen’s extant oeuvre, but the likelihood that it was a true companion piece to the ‘Philosopher’ seems distinct, given the fact that Van Spreeuwen combined a scholar and a woman spinning in another painting.¹²¹²Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in the catalogue for the sale, London (Sotheby’s), 5 April 1995, no. 93.

Jonathan Bikker, 2023

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

K. Bauch, Der frühe Rembrandt und seine Zeit: Studien zur geschichtlichen Bedeutung seines Frühstils, Berlin 1960, p. 267, note 194; S. Koslow, ‘Frans Hals’s Fisherboys: Exemplars of Idleness’, The Art Bulletin 57 (1975), pp. 418-32, esp. p. 426; E.J. Sluijter, M. Enklaar and P. Nieuwenhuizen (eds.), Leidse fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630-1760, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1988, pp. 222-23, no. 75; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, IV, Landau/Pfalz 1989, pp. 2548, 2563, no. 1710, with earlier literature

1903, p. 250, no. 2225; 1934, p. 267, no. 2225; 1976, p. 520, no. A 1713

Jonathan Bikker, 2023, 'Jacob van Spreeuwen, A Scholar in his Study, 1645', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026343