Two Men at Cards Outside a Country Inn

…; sale, Thomas Count of Fraula (1646-1738, Brussels), Brussels (auction house not known), 11 July 1738 sqq., no. 335 (‘Eene Vergaederinge op een Landtschap, waer Van Dyk met de kaert speelt met Rubbens, van vele figuren, door Van Dyck, hoog eenen v. 6 duym, breet eenen v. 10 duym [47.1 x 57.5 cm]’), fl. 310;¹¹Copy RKD.…; sale, Gerard Bicker, Lord of Swieten (1687-1753, Amsterdam, Zoeterwoude, The Hague), The Hague (Eyhoff), 12 April 1741 sqq., no. 26 (‘Een geselschap in een dorp, daar van Dyk en Rubbens met de Kaart speeld, en Brouwer daar by sit, met vele figuren […] door den selve [Van Dyck] hoog 1 voet 4 duim breed 1 voet 8 duym [41.9 x 52.3 cm]’), bought in at fl. 250;²²Copy RMA. sale, Gerard Bicker van Swieten, The Hague (auction house not known), 4 April 1755, no. 7 (‘Een gezelschap in een Dorp, daar van Dyk en Rubbens met de Kaart speelen, en Brouwer daar by zit, met veel Figuuren […] door Antony van Dyk, hoog 1 voet 4 duim, breet 1 voet 8 duim [41.8 x 52.3 cm]’), fl. 328;³³P. Terwesten, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen, met derzelver prysen, zedert den 22. Augusti 1752, tot den 21. November 1768 Zo in Holland, als Braband en andere Plaatzen in het openbaar Verkogt. Dienende tot een vervolg of Derde Deel op de Twee Deelen der uitgegeeve Cataloguen door wylen de Heer Gerard Hoet; Zynde hier agter gevoegt: Catalogus van een gedeelte van’t vorstelyk Kabinet Schilderyen van Zynde Doorl. Hoogheid, den Heere Prince van Orange en Nassau, Erfstadhouder, Capitain-Generaal en Admiraal der Verëenigde Nederlanden, &c. &c. &c., The Hague 1770, p. 15.…; collection Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague;⁴⁴The Van Heteren label, inscribed 119, is on the reverse. his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘Tableau très particulier représentant van Dijck et Rubens jouant aux cartes, le peintre Brouwer derrière eux qui les regarde, tous trois en habits de paysans, avec beaucoup d’accessoires, bois, h. 16 1. 20 [40.6 x 50.8 cm]’);⁵⁵‘Catalogue Raisonné d’une Collection de Tableaux appartenant à Monsieur A.L. Gevers, Page de Leurs Majestés le Roi et la Reine de Hollande’, s.l. 1808, transcribed in E.W. Moes and E. van Biema, De Nationale Konst-Gallery en Het Koninklijk Museum, Amsterdam 1909, pp. 145-51, esp. p. 146, no. 28. from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Lodewijk Napoleon King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809⁶⁶T.L.J. Verroen, ‘‘Een verstandig ryk Man’: de achttiende-eeuwse verzamelaar Adriaan Leonard Van Heteren’, in C. Scheffer (ed.) et al., Achttiende-eeuwse kunst in de Nederlanden, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 4 (1985), pp. 17-61, esp. p. 17, notes 2, 3.

ObjectNumber: SK-A-590

The attribution of the present painting to Vincent Malò (that is Vincent Malò I), first published in the 1887 catalogue, has much to commend it. But as discussed below, it is problematic. The difficulties in the way of it tend to favour an attribution to his homonymous son, a view with which Schepers tends to agree.¹⁵¹⁵E-mail to the compiler, 2019.

The monogram, like that on the other painting by Malò in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-781), is inscribed in a deliberately inconspicuous manner and was not detected until the 1880s; its form is documented in an inventory of a deceased, Antwerp estate made in 1644.¹⁶¹⁶See E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, V, p. 176. The present support is one of oak, which would have been ready for use from 1626, more probably from 1632; the reverse was coated in a ground in a manner typical of Antwerp practice.¹⁷¹⁷An Exhibition of Cleaned Pictures (1936-1947), London (The National Gallery) 1947, p. 51 under no. 51; the practice fairly common in the production of oak supports in seventeenth-century Antwerp seems not to have been surveyed. This would suggest that the painting was executed there rather than south of the Alps; whether such a support could have been available to the Flemish community of artists in Genoa is an open question, touched on below. But significant is Malò’s departure from Antwerp in 1634 or there abouts, never to return.

This is of relevance because the style and tone of the present depiction of a country inn is different from that of peasant scenes by other artists active in Antwerp in the first half or so of the 1630s, for instance, those by Adriaen Brouwer (1603/05-1638)¹⁸¹⁸For instance, Smoker, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 32.100.21, see M. Klinge and D. Lüdke (eds.), David Teniers der Jüngere 1610-1690: Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern, exh. cat. Karlsruhe (Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) 2005-06, no. 18., and David Teniers II (1610-1690),¹⁹¹⁹For instance, the Karlsruhe Peasant Musicians of 1634, see M. Klinge and D. Lüdke (eds.), David Teniers der Jüngere 1610-1690: Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern, exh. cat. Karlsruhe (Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) 2005-06, no. 3, inv. no. 1902. let alone Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640),²⁰²⁰Exemplified by his Kermesse in the Musée du Louvre, R. Oldenbourg, P.P. Rubens: Des Meisters Gemälde, Stuttgart/Berlin 1921, p. 406; N. Büttner, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XVII: Genre Scenes, London/Turnhout 2019, no. 10, pp. 193-214 and fig. 125. and perhaps to be included here, by Cornelis Saftleven (1607-1681).²¹²¹As for instance the two paintings of 1633 in anonymous sale, Amsterdam (Christie’s), 6 November 2000, no. 27 and 20/21 November 2013, no. 145. The two roughly executed peasant interiors in the De Geus van den Heuvel sale, which have been attributed to Vincent Malò I, seem more in line with the outspoken and uninhibited genre scenes of that time,²²²²B. De Geus van den Heuvel sale, Amsterdam (Sotheby Mak van Waay), 26/27 April 1976, nos. 30, 31. characteristics evident enough in two peasant interiors at Dresden and the Castello Sforzesca, Milan, which have been attributed to the artist at the RKD.²³²³Dresden, Gemäldegalerie, panel 42 x 53 cm (Die Staatliche Gemäldegalerie zu Dresden: Katalog der alten Meister, compiled by H. Posse, Dresden/Berlin 1930, no. 1394 as Molenaer); the Castello Sforzesca picture is noted as signed on the RKD mount.

Another factor that would point to a date of execution after the mid-1630s is the influence of Cornelis de Wael (1592-1667) in the handling and emphasis on profiles. Indeed, the physiognomy of the bald card player in the Rijksmuseum picture is similar to the drinker with a pitcher in the first state of an etching of an inn scene attributed to De Wael and datable to circa 1640-50,²⁴²⁴F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, Amsterdam/Roosendaal 1948-, XLIX, no. 116/1, p. 196 and p. 181, no. 16; thus dated by the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings, inv. no. S.7546 online catalogue; see A. Stoesser, Van Dyck’s Hosts in Genoa, Lucas and Cornelis de Wael’s Lives, Business Activities and Works, 2 vols., Turnhout 2018, II, p. 194. while the dog makes an appearance in Gustus engraved by Alexander Voet (1613-1689/90) after De Wael.²⁵²⁵F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, Amsterdam/Roosendaal 1948-, XLIX, no. (86), p. 258. Soprani records that Malò I executed ‘very nice and valuable little panels’²⁶²⁶Vite de’Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Genovesi di Raffaell Soprani … in questa seconda edizione, accressciute ed arrichite di note da Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, 2 vols., Genoa 1768-69, I, p. 468: ‘tavoline assai graziose, e pregevoli’. in the early years of his activity in Genoa. And it is possible that Antwerp supports were available in Genoa.²⁷²⁷There is a record of a painting by Malò I of 1636 executed on an Antwerp support, A Christ on the Way to Calvary, offered in an anonymous sale, Versailles (Palais de Congrés), 12 November 1978, no. 9, as stated in the sale catalogue. His close associate in Genoa, Cornelis de Wael, is known to have occasionally used wood as a support, which on two instances is specified as oak. A. Stoesser, Van Dyck’s Hosts in Genoa, Lucas and Cornelis de Wael’s Lives, Business Activities and Works, 2 vols., Turnhout 2018, I, p. 133, and II, her catalogue, nos. 17, 64, pp. 521, 532, refer to the paintings in oak. The first of these is on a support made by Frederick de Bout (active 1637-43), which led Stoesser to hypothesize that De Wael made an otherwise undocumented trip to Antwerp in the 1640s.

However, the detached, amused depiction of country and peasant life conveyed here is more in tune with Teniers’s vision in the early 1640s²⁸²⁸For instance, inn interiors at Munich and Montpellier of 1643 and 1644/45, see M. Klinge and D. Lüdke (eds.), David Teniers der Jüngere 1610-1690: Alltag und Vergnügen in Flandern, exh. cat. Karlsruhe (Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) 2005-06, nos. 32, 37. and later; if this is accepted then the possible role of Malò’s son becomes relevant. The few known facts about his life are given above; it is assumed that he remained with his father until around the time of the latter’s death in Rome and then returned to Antwerp. There his expertise in Italian art was recognized by his putative journey to London to acquire paintings from Charles I’s collection and he produced a body of works before his enrolment in the guild, in which could have been the Courtyard of an Inn of 1647 referred to above.²⁹²⁹See note 14. To judge from a scan of the reproduction in the 1898 sale catalogue, its setting and idiom are sufficiently similar to the Rijksmuseum painting as to warrant its ascription to him. But that the 1647 Courtyard is signed with the artist’s surname in full while the museum courtyard is signed with the same monogram as used (but perhaps not exclusively) by Vincent Malò I indicates how finely balanced is the matter of the latter’s attribution.

The principal figures, seated at the upturned barrel in the present picture, appear to be of a higher social rank than the drinkers nearby. The wishful identifications advanced in the Fraula and Bicker sale catalogues were rejected in the 1858 museum catalogue; nevertheless, even granted the possible appearance of the older man in the print attributed to De Wael, referred to above, it seems that these figures were intended to evoke in some ways an as yet unidentified jocular event.

Gregory Martin, 2022

M.G. Rutteri, ‘Vincenzo Malò dal manierismo al barocco’, Bollettino Liguistico 18 (1966), pp. 121-48, esp. p. 132, fig. 10 and p. 145; E. Greindl, M.-L. Hairs, M. Kervyn de Meerendre, M. Klinge, B. Schifflers and Y. Thiery, De zeventiende eeuw: De gouden eeuw van de Vlaamse schilderkust, Antwerp 1989, p. 209

1809, p. 20, no. 82 (as by Van Dyck, depicting Rubens, Van Dyck and Brouwer); 1843, p. 18, no. 84 [as ‘nothing to do with Van Dyck’, an unknown hand in the style of David Teniers II]; 1853, p. 35, no. 363 [unknown, fl. 500]; 1858, pp. 191-92, no. 431 (as unknown, a country inn); 1880, p. 194, no. 211 (as Carel van Mander, a peasant company); 1885, p. 30, no. 211 (as signed M v.L.); 1887, p. 106, no. 894 (as attributed to Vincent Malo, a peasant company); 1903, p. 168, no. 1514 (as attributed to Vincent Malo); 1976, p. 360, no. A 590 (as Vincent Malo)

G. Martin, 2022, 'attributed to Vincent (II) Malò, Two Men at Cards Outside a Country Inn, c. 1650', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8963