Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 0.5 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1631. The panel could have been ready for use by 1642, but a date in or after 1648 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, off-white ground extends up to the edges of the support. It contains what appears to be lead white.
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 from the back to the front, leaving reserves for the objects and table. The paint was applied thinly and fluently with impasted highlights. In the upper right quadrant, infrared photography revealed what seems to be a curtain and light, vertical bands, possibly strips of ground that were exposed when an earlier background was sanded down. Small paint losses reveal a rather coarse, dark grey layer underneath the current greenish-brown background, also visible at the contours of the objects. In other losses, white shows between these layers, and a black paint, consisting of very finely ground pigment particles, is locally visible along the top and bottom edges, neither one seemingly related to the final composition. The complex build-up of the paint layers may indicate that the composition was altered extensively. A minor change was made to the rummer which was initially slightly larger.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2010

Fair. The ground and paint layers have small losses, especially in the background. The paint is locally raised along the grain of the wood and abraded throughout.

…; ? sale, Jonkheer Valerius Lodewijk Vegilin van Claerbergen (1774-1844, Joure), Leeuwarden (J.C. Kutsch), 6 April 1846 sqq., no. 102, as ‘G. v.d. Velde’ (‘Een stil leven. Hoog 34d breed 31d. [34 x 31 cm]’);¹¹A note pasted on the reverse of the panel, written by Daniel Franken Dzn, refers to this sale.…; bequeathed by Daniel Franken Dzn (1838-1898), Amsterdam and Le Vésinet, to the museum, with 54 other paintings, 1898

Object number: SK-A-1766

Credit line: D. Franken Bequest, Le Vésinet

Jan Jansz van de Velde was known primarily as a painter of ‘tobaccos’, still lifes with smokers’ requisites. To these he often added objects associated with smoking and leisure time, or which were traditionally part of scenes of this kind, such as glasses of beer and wine, playing cards, roasted chestnuts, oysters and lemons. His pictures of these subjects were quite ambitious in the 1640s, but in his later career they became increasingly restrained. Relatively large tables made way for smaller ones on which there are only a few objects.³³For example Still Life with Fruit of 1657, Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum; illustrated in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, p. 616. A Still Life of 1658, Minneapolis Institute of Art. And Still Life with Fruit of 1658, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum; illustrated in E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, p. 1017. He used them to create remarkably intimate scenes set against a dark background. The most exuberant details are usually the long flourishes of the ornate signature on the edge of the table, testifying to the fact that he was the grandson of a great calligrapher.

This simple, refined painting of 1658 clearly shows how Van de Velde set to work. All the objects are from his standard repertoire: rummer, beer glass, pipe, tobacco and a coal-pan that has fallen over. Some details have been highly elaborated to contribute to the liveliness of the pciture. The few red, yellow and blue dots in the bowl of the pipe indicate that the tobacco is still burning. In front of it lies a glowing coal. The rummer is almost entirely filled with wine, and the beer still has a head. With a few subtle touches the artist has created the impression that the table has only just been vacated, and that people will soon return to pick up the smoking and drinking where they left off.

Erlend de Groot, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as Intimated by the Painters of the ‘Monochrome banketje’, II, Schiedam 1980, p. 136, no. 703 (wrongly illustrated as SK-A-2362); E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, p. 1016, no. 397/15

1903, p. 274, no. 2455; 1976, p. 559, no. A 1766

Erlend de Groot, 2026, 'Jan Jansz van de (III) Velde, _, 1658', in J. Bikker (ed.), _Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026829