A Wedding Feast, traditionally called ‘The Wedding of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel and Agnes van Bijler’, 1616

The support is an oak panel with a horizontal grain consisting of three planks and is bevelled on all sides. The top plank is thicker than the other two. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1603. The panel could have been ready for use by 1614, but a date in or after 1620 is more likely. The panel had already been used for a painting with an upright format. X-rays revealed two large female half-lengths below the painted surface. The paint was applied very smoothly and opaquely. The faces and the colourful fabrics of the clothes of the foreground figures were rendered with great care. There are several pentimenti, for instance in the leg of the seated man on the right and in the ruff of the woman next to him. The boy on the right was painted on top of the woman’s sleeve, which might indicate that he is a later addition.

Van Thiel 1977

Fair. The background is abraded. There are noticeable fillings along the upper panel join, and many matte retouchings.

...; estate inventory Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726-98), 19 March 1799 (‘Een dito [Schildery] in dito [oly verff ] door Duyster verbeeldende de Trouw van Adriaan Ploos van Amstelen vrouwe Agnes van Byler’);¹¹Ploos van Amstel 1980, p. 194. his wife, Margaretha Sonmans (? -1822), Moordrecht;²²Letter Jonkheer G. Ploos van Amstel, 2 April 1979, RMA. ? her niece Meinouda Engelberts or Meinouda Engelberts’s daughter, Sara Jacoba Simons;³³Letter Jonkheer G. Ploos van Amstel, 2 April 1979, RMA....; Jonkheer Johannes Ploos van Amstel (1804-83), The Hague; donated to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap by Jonkheer Johannes Ploos van Amstel and his son Jan Adriaan Gijsbert Ploos van Amstel (1843-94), Wanneperveen, 1878; on loan to the museum since c. 1886

ObjectNumber: SK-C-514

Credit line: On loan from the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap

When this painting was donated to the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap in 1878, much of the paint surface, including the signature, was obscured by overpainting. It has been attributed to various artists, including Herman Berntsz van Byler,⁴⁴Amsterdam 1872, p. 119, no. 4; Havard 1873, p. 68. No painter of that name is known, but it is possible that Jan van Bijlert was meant. Johann Liss,⁵⁵Cf. SK-A-1403. Pieter Codde and Jan Miense Molenaer,⁶⁶Coll. cat. 1886, p. 16. until Bredius attributed it to Willem Cornelisz Duyster on the basis of stylistic similarities to The Tric-trac Players (SK-A-1427) in the Rijksmuseum.⁷⁷Bredius 1888a, p. 194. Bredius’s attribution was not confirmed until 1972, almost a century later, when the overpainting was removed during restoration, revealing the original background and the tiled floor with Duyster’s signature.⁸⁸There is a detailed account of the restoration work in Van Thiel 1977.

Datings of the painting range from shortly after 1620⁹⁹Plietzsch 1960, p. 31. Beaujean (in Saur XXXI, 2002, p. 344), wrongly deduced from the old title that it was dated 1616. to c. 1630.¹⁰¹⁰Coll. cat. 1934; coll. cat. 1960; Von Bogendorf Rupprath in Haarlem-Hamburg 2003, p. 26. Playter gives both 1623 and 1625,¹¹¹¹Playter 1972, I, pp. 28, 56. However, like earlier authors she only knew the work in its overpainted state. while Van Thiel placed it c. 1625-28 on the evidence of the style and the costumes.¹²¹²Van Thiel 1977, p. 78. For the underpropper worn by the woman viewed from the back on the right see Van Thienen 1969, p. 486. The lack of dated works in Duyster’s oeuvre makes it difficult to arrive at a precise date, but in view of the clothing one around the middle of the 1620s is plausible.

The subject is a problem that is still unresolved. Seated on the right are a man and woman with their hands entwined, while on the left musicians are accompanying a round dance. There are several portraits in the group on the right and among the dancers. One particularly striking figure is the man in the left foreground, who is wearing a gold medal of honour on a two-stranded gold chain. The musicians and the couple kissing in the background are bit players.¹³¹³Somewhat comparable compositions are found in Pieter Codde’s work of the 1630s. See for example the painting dated 1633 in Vienna, Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, illustrated in coll. cat. Vienna 1992, p. 99. See also the remarks by Von Bogendorf Rupprath in Haarlem-Hannover 2003, p. 26, about Jan Miense Molenaer’s group portrait in the Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam.

When the painting was in the collection of Cornelis Ploos van Amstel at the end of the 18th century the subject was already being identified as the wedding of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel and Agnes van Bijler. Adriaen Ploos (1585-1639), who had the word Amstel added to his surname in 1636, held a number of important political offices, including delegate from Utrecht at the States-General. On 29 July 1637 he was one of the signatories to the official ‘States Translation’ of the Bible.¹⁴¹⁴Ploos van Amstel 1980, p. 1, note 3; see also the label on the back of the panel. However, the marriage of Adriaen Ploos and Agnes van Bijler (d. 1661) took place on 6 August 1616, some ten years before the painting could have been made. It is also unlikely that Duyster was commemorating the couple’s tin wedding, since only one child is shown, and they had several. The suggestion by a descendant that this may be a record of another family wedding is speculative.¹⁵¹⁵Ploos van Amstel 1980, p. 65, note 206.

The question is whether the subject of this painting by Duyster, who lived in Amsterdam, should even be sought in the history of the Ploos family of Utrecht. Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, the former owner of the group portrait, passed himself off as a descendant of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel, but he was not a direct descendant, and it is also far from certain that the painting was passed down through the family.¹⁶¹⁶Ploos van Amstel 1980, p. 1; see also the family tree on pp. 186-87. It would not be the first time that Ploos van Amstel sowed confusion by over-eagerly identifying portrait sitters.¹⁷¹⁷See, for example, Broos in coll. cat. Amsterdam 1993, pp. 60-62.

According to Playter, the man standing behind the seated couple appears in other works by Duyster, and may be a self-portrait.¹⁸¹⁸Playter 1972, I, p. 57. Van Thiel, who came to the same conclusion on the evidence of the man’s pose and the direction of his gaze, suspects that the now indistinct scene of a helmeted horseman and three other figures on the tapestry in the right background might explain the reason for the celebrations.¹⁹¹⁹Van Thiel 1995, p. 45. That hypothesis, though, is untenable, since examination of the paint layer during restoration in the early 1970s showed that the dark layer applied on top of the tapestry was painted by the artist himself.

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 63.

Havard 1873, p. 68 (as Herman Berntsz van Byler); Bredius 1888a, p. 194 (as The Wedding of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel and Agnes van Bijler); Playter 1972, I, pp. 56-57, 59-60, II, p. I; Van Thiel 1977; Van Thiel 1995, pp. 45, 53, with earlier literature

1886, p. 16, no. 59d (as Pieter Codde or Jan Miense Molenaer, The Wedding of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel and Agnes van Bijler); 1887, p. 105, no. 879a (as attributed to Johann Liss, The Wedding of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel and Agnes van Bijler); 1888, p. 105, no. 880 (as The Wedding of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel and Agnes van Bijler,1616); 1903, p. 91, no. 851 (as The Wedding of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel and Agnes van Bijler, 1616); 1934, p. 90, no. 851; 1960, p. 90, no. 851; 1976, p. 207, no. C 514; 2007, no. 63

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Willem Cornelisz. Duyster, A Wedding Feast, traditionally called ‘The Wedding of Adriaen Ploos van Amstel and Agnes van Bijler’, 1616, c. 1625', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8367