Support The plain-weave canvas, with an average of approx. 13 horizontal by 13 vertical threads per centimetre, has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Cusping at intervals of approx. 10 cm is present on the right.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The first, red layer consists of red and brown earth pigments, chalk, fine black pigment particles and some lead white. The second, lighter, brownish-red layer is composed of similar pigment particles but contains considerably more lead white.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The composition was built up from the front to the back in just a few layers. All elements, even the smaller shapes such as the knife and pipes, were applied first, with the ground serving as a mid-tone, as is visible, for example, in the foot of the flute glass. The background was carefully laid in around the objects, leaving a narrow border of ground exposed along almost all contours and only once or twice extending slightly over them, as is the case, for instance, with the Wan-li bowl of chestnuts. Very small components, such as the chestnuts, matchsticks, grains of salt and the olives, were applied on top of the greyish paint of the table, making use of its colour. The silver salt cellar and the upper part of the flute glass were rendered on top of the background, the latter with fine, white lines and highlights and a transparent paint for the wine. A very thin, blue scumble of azurite was added to the top of the rummer to create the bluish reflection in the glass. A substantial change has become visible adjacent to the white earthenware jug, where a tall beer glass that had been fully worked up, including a highlight on the brim, was replaced by the jug and the low drinking bowl in front of it.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2008

A. Wallert (ed.), Still Lifes: Technique and Style: The Examination of Paintings from the Rijksmuseum, Zwolle 1999, p. 11, fig. 7

Fair. Weave emphasis and slight flattening of the impasto have occurred due to lining, and there is a pronounced craquelure overall. The paint layer has many losses on the left. The black glaze on the Wan-li bowl is damaged, its shadow area is abraded and the ground has become locally visible in the whites. The paint of the flute glass has become more transparent, probably due to the presence of lead white. The background is abraded and has become locally transparent.

…; sale, Archibald Primrose (1847-1929, Epsom), 5th Earl of Rosebery, London (Christie’s), 5 May 1939, no. 143, £420,¹¹Apollo 29 (1939), p. 323. or £400,²²Copy RMA. to Smith;…; collection H.E. ten Cate (d. 1955), Almelo, 1939;…; with the dealer J. Denijs, Amsterdam, 1939;…; with the dealer D. Katz, Dieren, before May 1940;…; ? with the dealer J. Dik Jr, Amsterdam;…; acquired by H. Posse, for Adolf Hitler’s Führermuseum, Linz (inv. no. 1348), 1940;³³B. Schwarz, Hitlers Museum: Die Fotoalben Gemäldegalerie Linz: Dokumente zum ‘Führermuseum’, Vienna 200, p. 118, no. V/11. war recuperation, SNK, 1945 (inv. no. NK 2359); on loan from the SNK to the museum, June 1948 (inv. no. SK-C-1403); transferred to the museum, 1960⁴⁴Provenance reconstructed in R.E.O. Ekkart et al., Herkomst Gezocht: De geschiedenis van ruim 4700 kunstwerken die na WO II uit Duitsland terugkwamen en sindsdien de NK-collectie vormen/Origins Unknown: The History of over 4700 Works of Art that Returned from Germany to The Netherlands after World War II and Have since then Incorporated the NK Collection, The Hague 2006 (CD-ROM).

Object number: SK-A-3988

Starting in the late 1620s, the Haarlem painters Pieter Claesz, Willem Claesz Heda and Floris van Schooten regularly depicted small tables bearing a display of smokers’ requisites with jugs, glasses and food.⁶⁶Claesz’s earliest scene of this kind is from 1627; illustrated in N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as Intimated by the Painters of the ‘Monochrome banketje’, II, Schiedam 1980, II, p. 18, no. 51. Heda’s first one, which is dated 1628, is in Museum Bredius in The Hague; illustrated in E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, II, Lingen 1995, p. 419, no. 157/1. Van Schooten’s ‘tobacco’ is illustrated in O. ter Kuile, Seventeenth-Century North Netherlandish Still Lifes, The Hague 1985, pp. 166-67, no. VI-52, and was auctioned at Christie’s in Amsterdam on 17 May 2004, no. 81. A few of the early works also contain a sliced herring, a skull or playing cards, but generally there was little variation. In his choice of subject and combination of motifs Jan Jansz van de Velde followed in the tradition established by his Haarlem predecessors. The most striking object in this scene is the saltcellar in the background with three silver tulips on its lid. An identical one is found in a still life of 1648 by Heda.⁷⁷St Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum; illustrated in E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, II, Lingen 1995, p. 430, no. 157/21. Two such salts made by the silversmith Anthoni Grill in 1646 have survived.⁸⁸One is in the Amsterdam Museum (illustrated in H. Vreeken and A. den Dekker (eds.), Goud en zilver met Amsterdamse keuren: De verzameling van het Amsterdams Historisch Museum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2003, p. 117, no. 27) and the other in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (illustrated in J.R. ter Molen, Zilver: Catalogus van de voorwerpen van edelmetaal in de collectie van het Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, coll. cat. Rotterdam 1994, pp. 100-01).

It is perhaps no accident that tulips recur in the decoration of the small Wan-li bowl with chestnuts at the centre of the table. It is clear that the painter enjoyed visual rhymes, for an intimate still life of 1656 in Boston contains a rummer which has prunts of exactly the same shape as the blackberries lying to the right of it.⁹⁹Museum of Fine Arts; photo RKD. Other objects in the Rijksmuseum picture also appear to have been chosen because of a visual similarity or contrast, such as the oysters (hard on the outside, soft on the inside) and the olives (soft on the outside, hard on the inside), or the slender flute glass and the squat drinking bowl beside it.

One can only guess whether the combination of objects has a deeper meaning. The one thing that is certain is that smoking became increasingly popular in the Netherlands from the early seventeenth century onwards.¹⁰¹⁰G.A. Brongers, Nicotiana tabacum: The History of Tobacco Smoking in the Netherlands, Groningen 1964; I. Gaskell, ‘Tobacco, Social Deviance and Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century’, in H. Bock and T.W. Gaehtgens (eds.), Proceedings of the Symposium ‘Holländische Genremalerei im 17. Jahrhundert’, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie und Freie Universität, 20-22 June 1984, Berlin 1987, pp. 117-37. Tobacco was imported on a large scale after the start of the Twelve Years’ Truce in 1609, and the Dutch pipe-making industry was born around 1617. However, smoking was mainly associated with drunkenness, seamen, soldiers and peasants until way into the seventeenth century. Tobacco was regarded as a medicine, but its recreational use was very much frowned upon.¹¹¹¹I. Gaskell, ‘Tobacco, Social Deviance and Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century’, in H. Bock and T.W. Gaehtgens (eds.), Proceedings of the Symposium ‘Holländische Genremalerei im 17. Jahrhundert’, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie und Freie Universität, 20-22 June 1984, Berlin 1987, pp. 117-37, esp. p. 132. All the same, it seems unlikely that the connection with the lower social classes played a part in depictions of smoking materials, for the same paintings also feature items that refer to luxury and wealth. Despite the possible negative connotations attached to recreational smoking at the time, the ‘tobaccos’ of Van de Velde, like those of his predecessors and followers, appear mainly to celebrate the pleasures of ‘sucking tobacco’. This impression is reinforced by the other objects on this table, all of which refer to eating and drinking. They conjure up an image of relaxation, whiling away time in a well-stocked inn.

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’, I, Schiedam 1980, p. 133, no. 686; E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, pp. 1012-13, no. 397/5

1960, p. 315, no. 2455 A2; 1976, p. 559, no. A 3988

Erlend de Groot, 2026, 'Jan Jansz van de (III) Velde, _, 1651', in J. Bikker (ed.), _Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026827