Still Life with Westerwald Jug and Smoking Paraphernalia

Jan Jansz Treck (signed by artist), 1647

Stilleven met een kruik van steengoed, twee pijpen, een lont, een tinnen bordje, enkele noten en een glas halfgevuld met wijn.

  • Artwork typepainting
  • Object numberSK-A-2222
  • Dimensionssupport: height 49.5 cm x width 36.9 cm, outer size: depth 5.5 cm (support incl. incl. SK-L-5985)
  • Physical characteristicsoil on panel

Jan Jansz Treck

Still Life with Westerwald Jug and Smoking Paraphernalia

1647

Inscriptions

  • signature and date, in the medallion of the jug:JTreck / 1647
  • label, on the reverse:Van M.B. de Bee[.]te, Hag / 11 Sept 1885 f 25,-.(From M.B. de Beerte or Beeste, The Hague ?, 11 September 1885, 25 guilders.)

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of two vertically grained oak planks (approx. 17.7 and 19.2 cm), approx. 0.8 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1630. The panel could have been ready for use by 1641, but a date in or after 1647 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the edges of the support, running over them in a few places. The first, slightly translucent cream-coloured layer, consisting of what appears to be chalk, is followed by a very thin, solid white layer.
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, running over them in a few places. A first lay-in of the composition was applied in what appear to be translucent browns, introducing some volume and indicating the dark and light passages. The painting was built up from the back to the front, leaving a reserve for the jug and the table. Lit and shadowed areas of the still-life elements were blended wet in wet, allowing the undermodelling to show through partially, for example in the jug. The parts projecting over the edge of the table on the left were added on top of the background. A cool greyish paint was scumbled locally around the still-life elements. Heavy impasto was used for highlights and the decorations of the jug. Small adjustments were made to the contours of the match cord that extends over the front edge of the table.
Ige Verslype, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

  • infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 28 oktober 2009
  • paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-2222/1-2, 28 oktober 2009
  • technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 28 oktober 2009
  • dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 23 juni 2010

Condition

Fair. There are small areas of discoloured retouching throughout and larger ones along the join and in the lower left background. The paint surface has a sandy appearance, due to remarkably coarse white pigment particles visible with the naked eye throughout, especially in the background. These are possibly the result of metal soap formation. The paint layer is abraded throughout. The thick varnish is heavily discoloured and saturates poorly.

Conservation

  • conservator unknown, 1918: varnish mechanically removed; revarnished
  • H.H. Mertens, 1968: reinforcement of the join on the reverse removed; wax layer applied on the reverse

Provenance

…; purchased, fl. 25, by an unknown collector, from M.B. de Beerte, or Beeste ?, The Hague ?, 11 September 1885;1According to a label on the reverse of the panel; see Inscriptions.…; collection A.J. Nijland, Utrecht, 1894;2[E.W. Moes and C. Hofstede de Groot], Catalogus der tentoonstelling van oude schilderkunst te Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Genootschap Kunstliefde) 1894, p. 152, no. 439.…; sale, Mrs G. Pander Maat, née Keuter (†, Blokzijl), Mr Jacob Ankersmit (†, Baarn), Mr K. Keuter, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 3 April 1906 sqq., no. 977, as Adriaen van Utrecht, fl. 180, to the museum

Object number: SK-A-2222

The artist

Biography

Jan Jansz Treck (Amsterdam c. 1606 - Amsterdam 1652)

A notarized document of 1633 states that Jan Jansz Treck was ‘about 27 years old’ at the time, so he was probably born around 1606. His family was reasonably well-off, for when his mother Grietje Jansdr drew up her will in 1623 she left him 3,000 guilders in cash together with all the works of art that she had bought or would buy for him, as well as all the paintings he had made or would still make that she had purchased from him. Two years earlier his sister Geertruijd had married the Amsterdam still-life artist Jan Jansz den Uyl, with whom Treck very probably trained. They went on to work together and there is at least one still life that is signed by both of them.3Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as Intimated by the Painters of the ‘Monochrome banketje’, I, Schiedam 1980, p. 214, no. 290. The 1630s was a prosperous decade for Treck and his brother-in-law. They collaborated not only as painters but also in property deals. In 1639 Treck sold a house and yard ‘by the Heiligeweg Gate, behind the Guardhouse’ for Den Uyl. After the latter’s death in 1640, Treck promised to pay all his debts and became his sons’ guardian. That same year he lent the art dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh an unspecified sum of money. Documents show that Treck was living with his sister on Bloemgracht, ‘at the sign of the Owl’. In 1643-44 he lodged with the unknown artist Abraham Jansz, ‘residing by the Heiligeweg Gate’. Ten years later the latter’s widow Engeltje Teunis was still trying to get Treck’s heirs to pay his arrears of board and lodging, minus the costs ‘of a window that she has had installed above the seat where he painted’. She also claimed that after her husband’s death in 1650 Treck had made off with his easel, grinding stone, panels, brushes and pigments. Strangely enough, he seems to have been fairly wealthy at this stage of his life. In 1643 he lent the timber merchant Jan Cornelisz de Boer 1,800 guilders at 5 per cent interest, and that same year he sold a house ‘in Halsteeg, opposite Dwarsstraat’ for 6,000 guilders.

Treck made a will in 1647 in which he left his possessions to his sister Geertruijd and her children Jan and Johannes Jansz den Uyl, his brother’s son Jan Hendricksz Treck and ‘his good friend’ Abraham Jansz. He died five years later, and his probate inventory was drawn up on 27 September 1652. He left more than 10,000 guilders, mainly in the form of bonds and debentures. Most of it went to his three nephews. Jan and Johannes den Uyl were by then living in Amersfoort, where the former had followed in the footsteps of his father and his uncle by becoming a painter.

Like his brother-in-law, who was ten years his senior, Treck focused almost exclusively on ‘banquets’ and ‘tobaccos’. For the first genre he used a fairly limited repertoire of objects which he depicted in different arrangements: drinking vessels such as a rummer and a pass glass, a couple of Chinese bowls, a pewter jug, a salt cellar and a white tablecloth. His earliest signed work dates from 1635.4Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts; illustrated in G.J.M. Weber, Stilleben alter Meister in der Kasseler Gemäldegalerie, Melsungen 1989, no. 15a. It seems that his paintings were not very expensive. Two of his still lifes with silver dishes were valued at 15 and 20 guilders in 1648. The simple compositions of his scenes with smokers’ requisites, in particular, are closely allied to those by Jan Jansz van de Velde III, but it is not known whether one of them influenced the other. A document of 1661 states that Simon Luttichuys ‘retouched and finished’ at least one ‘Vanitas’ by Treck, but it seems unlikely that these two artists were in touch. The same goes for Pieter van Anraadt, whose only extant still life is closely related to Treck’s work.5The Hague, Mauritshuis; illustrated in A. Chong and W.T. Kloek (eds.), Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999-2000, pp. 208-09, fig. 46.

Erlend de Groot, 2024

References
A. Bredius and N. de Roever, ‘Rembrandt, nieuwe bijdragen tot zijne levensgeschiedenis, II: Bijlage B: Jan Jansz. Uyl of Den Uyl: geboren omstreeks 1595, overleden 1640 te Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 5 (1887), pp. 229-34, esp. p. 232; A. Bredius, ‘Jan Jansz. Uyl (een nalezing)’, Oud Holland 35 (1917), pp. 193-95, esp. p. 194; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, IV, The Hague, 1917, pp. 1289, 1292; ibid., V, 1918, p. 1688; ibid., VI, 1919, pp. 2085-96; ibid., VII, 1921, p. 235; A.P.A. Vorenkamp, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van het Hollandsch stilleven in de zeventiende eeuw, diss., Leiden University 1933, pp. 41-44; Trautscholdt in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXIII, Leipzig 1939, pp. 367-68; P. de Boer, ‘Jan Jansz. Den Uyl’, Oud Holland 57 (1940), pp. 49-64; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, pp. 196-97; J. van der Veen, ‘Het kunstbedrijf van Hendrick Uylenburgh in Amsterdam: Productie en handel tussen 1625 en 1655’, in F. Lammertse and J. van der Veen, Uylenburgh en Zoon: Kunst en commercie van Rembrandt tot De Lairesse, 1625-1675, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2006, pp. 117-205, esp. pp. 188-89

Entry

There was a great deal of art-historical interest in Jan Jansz Treck and his work in the five decades after his rediscovery by Abraham Bredius at the end of the nineteenth century.6A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 8 (1890), pp. 1-17, 217-34, 297-313, esp. pp. 14, 222. He was even regarded as a great artist, with his still life of 1647 in the Rijksmuseum described as ‘one of its best-known paintings’.7P. de Boer, ‘Jan Jansz. Den Uyl’, Oud Holland 57 (1940), pp. 49-64, esp. p. 52. It is now in rather sorry condition, with large discoloured retouchings along the glued join and a badly yellowed varnish, which is partly why it is not easy to see it as the masterpiece it was previously taken to be.

It is true, though, that the sober composition and the everyday utensils give a good idea of a table in a seventeenth-century tavern. The glass, pewter dish and rough wooden piece of furniture are of the most basic workmanship. The predominant object is a pot-bellied Westerwald stoneware beer jug with a pewter lid that probably dates from around the time of the painting or a little earlier.8There is similar decoration on several Westerwald ball-shaped steins dated 1646 (Trier, Rheinisches Landesmuseum; illustrated in P. Seewaldt, Rheinisches Steinzeug: Bestandskatalog des Rheinischen Landesmuseums Trier, coll. cat. Trier 1990, p. 133, no. 378) and 1647 (Rijksmuseum, BK-NM-10078). The medallion is almost identical to that on another Westerwald ball-shaped stein of around 1650; sale, Amsterdam (Glerum), 25 June 2006, no. 309 (ill.). Treck included the same jug in a vanitas still life of 1648,9London, The National Gallery; illustrated E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, p. 988. which is in far better state than the Rijksmuseum panel and gives a proper understanding of the much cooler colours that the present work would have had originally. Also on the table here are a couple of chestnuts and smoking paraphernalia – pipes, a match cord and some tobacco.

This painting is something of an exception in Treck’s oeuvre in that almost all his other pictures show costlier objects, such as porcelain bowls.10The only other exception is a painting of 1650 in a Swiss private collection in which the only objects are a jug, a pipe and a pewter dish; illustrated in the catalogue for the sale, Monaco (Sotheby’s), 6 December 1987, no. 57. In addition, Treck’s compositions are usually more complex and enlivened with undulating tendrils or cloths. However, it is not inconceivable that he made more of these restrained still lifes with everyday items but that they have been lost.

Erlend de Groot, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

A.P.A. Vorenkamp, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van het Hollandsch stilleven in de zeventiende eeuw, diss., Leiden University 1933, pp. 44-45; I. Bergström, Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seventeenth Century, London 1956, p. 152; N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as Intimated by the Painters of the ‘Monochrome banketje’, II, Schiedam 1980, p. 125, no. 644; E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, p. 987, no. 387/2

Collection catalogues

1912, p. 394, no. 2312a; 1934, p. 280, no. 2312a; 1960, p. 305, no. 2312 B1; 1976, p. 544, no. A 2222

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2024, 'Jan Jansz. Treck, Still Life with Westerwald Jug and Smoking Paraphernalia, 1647', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027511

(accessed 9 December 2025 16:38:22).

Footnotes

  • 1According to a label on the reverse of the panel; see Inscriptions.
  • 2[E.W. Moes and C. Hofstede de Groot], Catalogus der tentoonstelling van oude schilderkunst te Utrecht, exh. cat. Utrecht (Genootschap Kunstliefde) 1894, p. 152, no. 439.
  • 3Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as Intimated by the Painters of the ‘Monochrome banketje’, I, Schiedam 1980, p. 214, no. 290.
  • 4Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts; illustrated in G.J.M. Weber, Stilleben alter Meister in der Kasseler Gemäldegalerie, Melsungen 1989, no. 15a.
  • 5The Hague, Mauritshuis; illustrated in A. Chong and W.T. Kloek (eds.), Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999-2000, pp. 208-09, fig. 46.
  • 6A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 8 (1890), pp. 1-17, 217-34, 297-313, esp. pp. 14, 222.
  • 7P. de Boer, ‘Jan Jansz. Den Uyl’, Oud Holland 57 (1940), pp. 49-64, esp. p. 52.
  • 8There is similar decoration on several Westerwald ball-shaped steins dated 1646 (Trier, Rheinisches Landesmuseum; illustrated in P. Seewaldt, Rheinisches Steinzeug: Bestandskatalog des Rheinischen Landesmuseums Trier, coll. cat. Trier 1990, p. 133, no. 378) and 1647 (Rijksmuseum, BK-NM-10078). The medallion is almost identical to that on another Westerwald ball-shaped stein of around 1650; sale, Amsterdam (Glerum), 25 June 2006, no. 309 (ill.).
  • 9London, The National Gallery; illustrated E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, p. 988.
  • 10The only other exception is a painting of 1650 in a Swiss private collection in which the only objects are a jug, a pipe and a pewter dish; illustrated in the catalogue for the sale, Monaco (Sotheby’s), 6 December 1987, no. 57.