The support consists of two, horizontally grained oak planks. The back of the panel has been planed down and cradled. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1606. The panel could have been ready for use by 1617, but a date in or after 1623 is more likely. The ground has an off-white colour. The paint layers were built up from the back to the front, the figures being reserved in the background.

Fair. The paint layer is slightly abraded and the varnish is discoloured.

...; sale, Jonkheer A.W. Witsen Baron Straalman (†) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 November 1913 sqq., no. 319, fl. 500, to the dealer Frederik Muller;¹¹Copy RKD....; sale, W.A. Royaards et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 20 June 1916 sqq., no. 177, fl. 700;...; sale, J. Groot Jamin et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 12 December 1922, no. 151, fl. 725;²²Copy RKD....; sale, H.L. Klein et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 7 July 1931 sqq., no. 200, fl. 800;...; sale, C.A. van Hees (Reeuwijk), Amsterdam (Mak van Waay), 31 May 1960, no. 2, fl. 37,000, to the dealer A. Nijstad, Lochem;³³Copy RKD. from whom, fl. 44,030, to the museum, 1960

Object number: SK-A-4033

In this painting, which is quite large by Arentsz’s standards, a group of gypsy women have pitched their tents on a riverbank outside a town. One of them is reading the palm of a fisherboy on the right, an elderly woman is paying the one in the middle, and in the tent on the left is a woman with a baby and two children. The gypsies are set apart by their long hair, dark complexion and long dresses, and in the case of the one in the centre, a blanket. There is another, but smaller version of this painting,⁶⁶Paris, Galerie Heim, panel, 27.5 x 51.5 cm; illustrated in dealer cat. Heim 1974, no. 23. in which the gypsy sitting to the right of the tent is missing and the two groups in the centre of the composition have changed places. In terms of the palette, the structuring of the composition with a broad view of a river in the background, and the draughtsman-like execution, this work fits in with the Rijksmuseum’s other paintings by Arentsz from the period c. 1625-30. The motif of the duck pen in the left middleground, in which a swimming dog is chasing the ducks, is also found in a painting by Arentsz in Paris.⁷⁷Muse´e du Louvre; illustrated in Poensgen 1923, p. 119. The building in the right background is the Haarlem Gate in Amsterdam, which was built by Hendrick de Keyser in 1616-17. Here it appears to have been used more as an isolated motif rather than to define a location.⁸⁸With thanks to Boudewijn Bakker for this observation.

Gypsies, also known as Egyptians (after their supposed land of origin) and heathens, were regarded as antisocial because of their nomadic lifestyle, and were repeatedly getting into trouble with the authorities for begging, vagrancy, theft and swindling people out of money for reading palms and predicting the future.⁹⁹See Amsterdam 1965, pp. 22-23, with earlier literature. Roaming gypsies foretelling the future to ordinary citizens were a recurrent theme in Dutch and French prints, drawings and paintings from the beginning of the 17th century.¹⁰¹⁰Pigler 1974, II, pp. 571-74; see the discussion of this subject by Luijten in Amsterdam 1997, pp. 133-36, in connection with The Fortune-teller, a print after a design by Jacques de Gheyn II. Gypsies are also depicted a few times in the work of Hendrick Avercamp. A gypsy woman reads a peasant woman’s hand in the foreground of his Winter Scene on a Frozen Canal of c. 1620 in Los Angeles,¹¹¹¹Carter collection; Welcker 1979, p. 214, no. S 58.1, fig. 25. and camping and fortune-telling gypsies also feature in two drawings.¹²¹²Welcker 1979, p. 266, no. T 88, p. 272, no. T 118, fig. 50. The financial accounts of Kampen record that gypsies (‘the heathens’) were expelled from the town in 1625.¹³¹³Welcker 1979, p. 177, Appendix 67.

Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 7.

Heppner 1940, p. 242; Amsterdam 1965, pp. 22-23, no. 61

1976, p. 87, no. A 4033; 2007, no. 7

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Arent Arentsz., River Landscape with Gypsies, c. 1625 - c. 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026506