Support The panel consists of three vertically grained oak planks (approx. 18.1, 28.3 and 12.6 cm), approx. 0.7 cm thick. The right edge has probably been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks on the middle and right planks, but not on the left plank, which also differs on the front, in that the tonality of the paint layer is darker there than on the other two. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1626. The panel could have been ready for use by 1637, but a date in or after 1643 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, white ground extends up to the edges of the support at the top and bottom, over the one on the left, and up to the one on the right, where it ends abruptly. It contains what appear to be lead white and chalk.
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 at the top and bottom, over the one on the left, and up to the one on the right, where it ends abruptly. The composition was largely built up from the back to the front with fluent, smooth, often wet-in-wet brushwork. The transparent parts of the glasses were applied on top of the background, which was painted quite roughly, as was the tablecloth. The orange and lemon were thickly executed to suggest the texture of the skin. The other still-life elements were rendered carefully, with delicate, pastose highlights on the details. Infrared photography revealed that twigs were initially planned above and to the left of the tall beer glass.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2008

Fair. The paint is slightly abraded and has numerous small losses throughout, especially on the right plank. The originally red-brown contents of the two foremost glasses have turned greyish, and the knife and the red glazes on the orange have become more transparent. The varnish has yellowed.

…; collection Mrs Johanna Catharina Frederika Lemker, née Muller (1817-1908), Kampen and Vollenhof Estate, Oldebroek;¹¹G.P. Rouffaer, ‘Vier Kamper schilders: Ernst Maeler, Mechtelt toe Boecop, Bernhard Vollenhove, Steven van Duyven, III: Bernhard Vollenhove’, Oud Holland 5 (1887), pp. 295-308, esp. p. 300, note 2. her sale, Kampen (notary M.J. van Krieken and F. Muller), 7 July 1908, no. 48, fl. 1,000, to the museum

Object number: SK-A-2362

This strikingly lavish still life by Jan Jansz van de Velde was first spotted by the historian Gerret Pieter Rouffaer, who found it in the collection of the dowager Lemker-Muller of Kampen in 1887.³³See Provenance. G.P. Rouffaer, ‘Vier Kamper schilders: Ernst Maeler, Mechtelt toe Boecop, Bernhard Vollenhove, Steven van Duyven, III: Bernhard Vollenhove’, Oud Holland 5 (1887), pp. 295-308, esp. p. 300: ‘prachtstuk!!’ (superb piece). It had probably been in the family a long time and was kept at the Vollenhof country estate in Oldebroek, south-west of Zwolle.⁴⁴The estate had been bought in 1710 by Arnold Vollenhove (1661-1721). It came into the possession of the Lemker family through his daughter Gesina Catharina, who married the Kampen town clerk Frans Lemker in 1733. Her grandson was the Kampen burgomaster Frans Lemker (1775-1858), whose widow survived him by 50 years. The country estate and the painting collection were sold by public auction after her death in 1908. With its great variety of objects, it is one of Van de Velde’s most ambitious works. Together with the Still Life with Wine Glass dated 1651,⁵⁵SK-A-3988. it is also one of the largest paintings in the artist’s known oeuvre.⁶⁶The dimensions of the present work are 64 x 59 cm, those of the 1651 still life 69 x 89.5 cm. Some of the items were part of his stock repertoire, such as the pipe and the unglazed earthenware coal-pan with a bit broken off.⁷⁷See also SK-A-3988 and SK-A-1766. The composition is dominated by the tall, eye-catching passglass, half-filled with foaming beer.⁸⁸Van de Velde depicted a similar glass in a still life of 1653, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; illustrated in F.G. Meijer, The Collection of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Paintings Bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward, coll. cat. Oxford (Ashmolean Museum) 2003, pp. 305-06, no. 84. Glasses of this kind were used in drinking-bouts, during which they were passed from person to person, each drinking exactly one measure.⁹⁹For examples of passglasses see B. Broos and M. Schapelhouman, Oude tekeningen in het bezit van de Gemeentemusea van Amsterdam waaronder de collectie Fodor, IV: Nederlandse kunstenaars geboren tussen 1600 en 1660, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum) 1993, pp. 118-19, nos. 161-63. There is another special glass half-hidden by the sprig of greenery and the pewter flagon. It has a blue-winged stem and a residue of red wine in the bowl.

On the face of it, the objects appear to have been chosen for the variety of their textures. According to Priem, the work is associated with the concept of Temperantia, and is thus a warning to the viewer to exercise moderation.¹⁰¹⁰R. Priem, Dutch Masters from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, exh. cat. Melbourne (National Gallery of Victoria) 2005, p. 22. This reading is contradicted by the absence of explicit allusions to vanitas or temperance symbolism in Van de Velde’s paintings, which instead quietly celebrate the pleasures of food, drink, tobacco and gaming. There is, however, a relationship between most of the main items depicted, namely that they are foodstuffs or consumer goods that originated in far-away places. The tobacco, upper left, hailed from South America, even though it was already being grown in many European herb gardens by the 1560s.¹¹¹¹H.K. Roessingh, ‘Tobacco Growing in Holland in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Case Study of the Innovative Spirit of Dutch Peasants’, The Low Countries History Yearbook 11 (1978), pp. 18-54, esp. pp. 18-19. Similarly, the orange and lemon come from the Mediterranean or, in Van de Velde’s time, could have been procured from a hothouse. Centre stage is a Chinese kraak porcelain dish filled with pepper from the East Indies, a motif which is subtly given emphasis by the coat of arms of the city of Amsterdam on the lid of the pewter jug just behind it. The artist thus seems to highlight the leading role of Amsterdam in lucrative overseas trade.¹²¹²Staets in K.H. Corrigan et al., Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Salem (Peabody Essex Museum) 2015-16, p. 274. Although he gathered together objects of different materials (earthenware, porcelain, glass and pewter) with contrasting properties (opaque, translucent, reflective) the contrasts are toned down, giving the composition a balanced, tranquil appearance.

The ambitious design of the Rijksmuseum painting also reveals a few of the artist’s typical shortcomings in terms of perspective and composition. For example, the wooden box behind the passglass and the flagon, on which the pipe and coal-pan are placed, is a board game, probably trick-track, with one of the playing pieces caught between its two halves, but there is not really enough room for it on the table. Finally, there is the odd, incomplete depiction of the tabletop. It is possible that the right side of the scene was cropped slightly at an early date. The paint continues over the edge of the left-hand plank, clearly showing that the panel was not cut down there. That is not the case on the right.¹³¹³See Technical notes.

Erlend de Groot, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

G.P. Rouffaer, ‘Vier Kamper schilders: Ernst Maeler, Mechtelt toe Boecop, Bernhard Vollenhove, Steven van Duyven, III: Bernhard Vollenhove’, Oud Holland 5 (1887), pp. 295-308, esp. p. 300; N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as Intimated by the Painters of the ‘Monochrome banketje’, II, Schiedam 1980, p. 131, no. 678 (wrongly illustrated as SK-A-1766); E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, pp. 1010-11, no. 397/3; F.G. Meijer, The Collection of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Paintings Bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward, coll. cat. Oxford (Ashmolean Museum) 2003, p. 306

1912, p. 395, no. 2455a; 1934, p. 290, no. 2455a; 1960, p. 315, no. 2455 A1; 1976, p. 559, no. A 2362

Erlend de Groot, 2026, 'Jan Jansz van de (III) Velde, _, 1647', in J. Bikker (ed.), _Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026828