Support The single, horizontally 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 1628. The panel could have been ready for use by 1639, but a date in or after 1645 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of warm beige pigment particles with a small addition of very fine earth pigments.
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 dark to light. The semi-transparent brownish initial lay-in of the architecture and figures has remained partly visible. The more opaque and lighter colours were then added, introducing further detail and form. The beams in the background were executed with quick and sketchy brushstrokes. The dog, jugs and woman in the foreground, as well as the faces of the other figures are rendered with more detail and show fine though still quite rapid brushwork. The paint surface is smooth throughout.
Jessica Roeders, 2022

Fair. The paint surface is slightly abraded, leaving the ground exposed in the background, flesh colours and other light areas. There are some drying cracks, especially in the bright red parts. The thick, glossy and yellowed varnish shows a disturbing crack pattern, particularly in the darker areas.

…; sale, Dr Simon Stinstra (1735-1782, Harlingen), Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 26 March 1783, no. 84 (‘Op Paneel, hoog 19, breed 26½ duim [48 x 68 cm]. In een Boeren Binnenhuis ziet men voor aan een Tafel zitten een jonge Vrouw, met een oude Man, op de Kaart te speelen; de Vrouw die laat dezelven aan de Omstanders zien, als bevreest te zyn wat zy op zal gooijen tegens haare Party, waar na de Toezienders met verlangen staan te kyken naar de uitkomst van ’t Spel, andere Huislieden zich ondertusschen vermaakende met Drinken; verder is deeze Huismans Wooning aartig versierd met Meubilen en Gereedschappen.’), probably to his daughter, Isabella Stinstra (1760-1829), Amsterdam; her sale, Amsterdam (B. Ogel Wight et al.), 2 July 1829, no. 12 (‘Hoog 48, breed 66 duim [48 x 66 cm]. Een Boeren Binnenhuis, waarin een aantal boeren en boerinnen bezig zyn met kaartspel en andere vermaken, vol werking en levendig van voorstelling.’), fl. 200, to Albertus Brondgeest,¹¹Copy RMA. probably for Isabella Stinstra’s cousin, Freerk Dirks Fontein (1777-1843), Harlingen; his sale, Harlingen (W. Eekhoff), 19 April 1847, postponed to 26 (30) April 1847 sqq., no. D (‘Hoog 48 d. breed 68 d. [48 x 68 cm] Paneel. Een Boerenbinnenhuis, waarin verscheidene personen rondom eene tafel zitten, acht gevende op het kaartspel tusschen eene jonge vrouw en een oud man, welke laatste, door het houden van een spiegel boven zijn hoofd, bedrogen wordt; vol werking en levendig van voorstelling.’), fl. 165, to his daughter, Dieuwke Fontein (1800-1879), Amsterdam;²²Lijst van schilderijen, beelden en teekeningen van Adriaan van der Hoop te Amsterdam, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 40, no. 231. See also the following note. collection of her husband, Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam;³³Lijst van schilderijen, beelden en teekeningen van Adriaan van der Hoop te Amsterdam, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 40, no. 231: ‘Voor eene voorstelling van deen Boerenbinnenhuis overgenomen van mijn Vrouw die het gekocht had op de Veiling van Boeken en Schilderijen van wylen haar Vader de Heer Fr. D. Fontein gehouden te Harlingen den 19 April door J. Molenaer f 165’. his widow, Dieuwke Fontein, Spaarnberg, Santpoort;⁴⁴Note RMA. her granddaughter, Olga E.A.E. Wüste, née Baroness Von Gotsch (1848-1924), Santpoort; donated from her estate by her great-niece, Johanna Gerarda Fontein (1857-1941), to the museum, with four other paintings, 1924⁵⁵Provenance from 1847 to the present reconstructed in A. Pollmer, ‘Catalogus van de schilderijen in de verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop’, in E. Bergvelt et al., De Hollandse meesters van een Amsterdamse bankier: De verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; Rijksmuseum) 2004-05, pp. 135-95, esp. p. 189, no. B2. The four other paintings are SK-A-3020 to 3022 and SK-A-3024.

Object number: SK-A-3023

Credit line: Gift of J.G. Fontein, Santpoort

After the mid-1640s Jan Miense Molenaer began to focus increasingly on compositions with merrymaking peasants that were heavily influenced by Adriaen Brouwer and Isack and Adriaen van Ostade.¹⁰¹⁰D.P. Weller, ‘Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age’, in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, pp. 9-25, esp. pp. 17, 19. As in the Rijksmuseum Cheating at Cards, the palette in these works is largely tonal and the small-scale figures are set in large barn-like spaces. These interiors most resemble those in paintings by Adriaen van Ostade from the first half of the 1640s,¹¹¹¹See, for example, the Van Ostades illustrated in B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, I, Hamburg 1981, p. 261. while the man passed out on a barrel is probably derived from Brouwer’s Slaughter Feast in Schwerin,¹²¹²Staatliches Museum Schwerin; illustrated in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, p. 330, fig. 36c. and the gnarly drunk seen in profile wearing a red scarf on his head resembles other figures by that Flemish artist.¹³¹³See, for example, Brouwer’s Singing Peasants, Kunsthaus Zürich; illustrated in B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle: Gesamtdarstellung mit Werkkatalogen, I, Hamburg 1981, p. 254, fig. 12. With the exception of a few highly animated and quite colourful pictures teeming with more meticulously rendered figures from around 1659-62, the quality of Molenaer’s later production is mediocre, as evidenced by the present panel.¹⁴¹⁴D.P. Weller, ‘Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age’, in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, pp. 9-25, esp. pp. 20, 21. The lack of dated paintings and the repetition of motifs, such as the man slumped over a barrel,¹⁵¹⁵This figure appears in a number of later paintings by Molenaer including one of 1659 in Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in H. Bock et al. (eds.), Berlin, Gemäldegalerie: Gesamtverzeichnis, coll. cat. Berlin, p. 365. makes it difficult to establish a chronology for Molenaer’s work in the latter part of his career, and a more specific indication than the 1650s or ’60s for this scene cannot be given.

The subject, card playing, was already popular with artists in the Middle Ages, and in the 1520s was depicted by Lucas van Leyden and his followers.¹⁶¹⁶Weller in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, pp. 124-25. The Utrecht Caravaggisti were the first seventeenth-century Dutch painters to employ it. Molenaer treated the theme in one of his earliest known works, Card Players by Lamplight of around 1627-28,¹⁷¹⁷Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, p. 281. and it would remain a favourite throughout his career.

In the Rijksmuseum painting, as in his earliest one of card players and another work of around 1634-35,¹⁸¹⁸Manchester, Currier Museum of Art; illustrated in D.P. Weller, C. von Bogendorf Rupprath and M. Westermann, Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, exh. cat. Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art)/Indianapolis (Indianapolis Museum of Art)/Manchester (Currier Museum of Art) 2002-03, p. 124. an old peasant is being cheated out of his money by a figure holding a mirror behind him, revealing his cards to his opponent. This motif had already been used in the northern Netherlands by Dirck van Baburen.¹⁹¹⁹Van Baburen’s composition is known by way of two copies; see L.J. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen (c. 1595-1624): A Dutch Painter in Utrecht and Rome, Utrecht 1965, pp. 137-38, no. B3, fig. 25. As in Molenaer’s early output as well, a figure (or figures in the case of the present one) looks out of the picture and encourages the viewer’s complicity in the swindle. The young woman is also showing us the five cards in her hand, which includes a high one, the ace of clubs.²⁰²⁰Only the ace of spades was higher; see Kortenhorst-von Bogendorf Rupprath in J.A. Welu and P. Biesboer (eds.), Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and her World, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum)/Worcester (Worcester Art Museum) 1993, p. 280. The young card-sharp in Molenaer’s earliest painting of the theme also holds an ace of clubs. Whereas the old peasant’s opponents in Molenaer’s earliest treatments of the subject are dandified soldiers, here he is being cheated by members of his own social and economic class. In keeping with the low status of the company and the humble space they occupy the score is being marked with chalk directly on the table, rather than on a slate, as in a more gentrified interior with card players by Jan Steen, for example.²¹²¹Private collection; illustrated in H.P. Chapman et al., Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1996-97, p. 143. As in Steen’s painting, though, the chalk in Molenaer’s was probably also intended as an allusion to the Dutch sayings ‘in het krijt staan’ (literally ‘to be in the chalk’: to be in the red) and ‘met dubbel krijt schrijven’ (literally ‘to write with a double chalk’: to charge double).²²²²For these sayings see Kloek in H.P. Chapman et al., Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1996-97, p. 144.

Card playing had a bad reputation in the seventeenth century and was attacked by moralists and discouraged by the civic authorities.²³²³See E. de Jongh, Tot lering en vermaak: Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1976, pp. 109, 151; De Jongh in E. de Jongh and G. Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life: Genreprints in the Netherlands 1550-1700, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1997, p. 213. Among the vices with which the pastime was related are excessive drinking and idleness. Molenaer also made these associations in the present painting. Two of his peasants are holding glasses, which one of them appears about to replenish from a rather large jug. Idleness is embodied in the slouched figure in the left foreground and the man behind him who has fallen asleep on a barrel.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

1926, p. 133, no. 1636a; 1934, p. 194, no. 1636a; 1976, p. 392, no. A 3023

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Jan Miense Molenaer, Cheating at Cards, c. 1650 - 1668', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025740