Still Life with Fish

Pieter de Putter, c. 1639 - c. 1659

Visstilleven. Op de hoek van een houten tafel liggen enkele verschillende soorten vissen op een aardewerken vergiet.

  • Artwork typepainting
  • Object numberSK-A-1295
  • Dimensionssupport: height 68.5 cm x width 57.6 cm
  • Physical characteristicsoil on panel

Pieter de Putter

Still Life with Fish

c. 1639 - c. 1659

Inscriptions

  • signature, bottom right, on the edge of the table:P D V T r f

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of four vertically grained oak planks (approx. 12.5, 6.5, 26.4 and 12.7 cm), approx. 1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1622. The panel could have been ready for use by 1633, but a date in or after 1639 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends up to the edges of the support.
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. The first lay-in was indicated with a dark transparent paint, which also serves as a base for the darkest areas, for example the shadows and the tails of the fish. Their scales were created by a pattern of moon-shaped black lines over the ground and/or the lay-in. Grey and white paints were then added for further modelling. A fair amount of impasto was used in the lightest parts of the fish.
Zeph Benders, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: W. de Ridder / H. van Eendenburg, RMA, 27 november 1997
  • paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, nos. SK-A-1295/1-2, 15 mei 2008
  • technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 15 mei 2008
  • dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 18 februari 2010

Condition

Fair. All joins were reglued in the past and are slightly open in some places. There are discoloured retouchings along all edges. The varnish has severely yellowed.

Conservation

  • conservator unknown, 1900: overpaint of the background removed
  • J.A. Hesterman, 1901: repaired
  • M. van de Laar, 1998: joins reglued; retouched and varnish adjusted

Provenance

…; sale, Dirk Margarethus Alewijn (1816-1885, Hoorn and Medemblik), Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 16 December 1885, no. 42 (‘Maître inconnu (Marqué D.P.T.R.): Nature morte. Deux perches, un brême et un brochet sur une passoire posée sur un table. H. 67. L. 57’), fl. 45, to Dr Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), The Hague;1Copy RMA. by whom donated to the museum, 1885;2 NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 166, no. 7 (11 January 1886); NHA, ARS, Kop., inv. 289, pp. 79-80, no. 79 (12 January 1886). on loan to the Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, Muiden, since 1998

Object number: SK-A-1295

Credit line: Gift of A. Bredius, The Hague

The artist

Biography

Pieter de Putter (? Middelburg c. 1600 - Beverwijk 1659)

Pieter de Putter was probably born shortly after 1600, the year his parents married. His father Joost, who was also a painter, was mentioned as a pupil in the records of the Middelburg Guild of St Luke in 1587. In 1604, he enrolled in the guild at The Hague, where he had moved with his family. In 1626 Maria van den Queborn became Pieter de Putter’s wife. She was a daughter of the court artist Daniel van den Queborn and sister of the printmaker and painter Crispijn van den Queborn. In 1632 De Putter sold a small plot of land near Zoeterwoude, northeast of The Hague, which he had inherited from his grandfather. This indicates that he was fairly well off. In 1639 and 1640 he was appointed warden of the Hague Guild of St Luke, but not elected. He was related to the still-life painter Abraham van Beyeren, who in 1647 married Anna van den Queborn, a niece of De Putter’s wife. Because of their family ties it has often been suggested that he was Van Beyeren’s master, but this is highly unlikely. Still-life artists who were certainly influenced and probably taught by him were Jacob Biltius (1633-1681) and Johannes Kuveenis (c. 1620-after 1665). For reasons as yet unknown, De Putter moved to Beverwijk in 1658, where he died the following year. An obituary notice called him a ‘renowned painter of fishes’.

De Putter produced a few portraits that are stylistically close to those of his brother-in-law Crispijn van den Queborn, but he specialized mainly in fish still lifes, stores and markets, and fishermen. Only a single dated work has been preserved, a fish still life of 1644.3Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, p. 37. Most of his pictures are usually placed tentatively in the 1640s. De Putter’s stylistic development has yet to be charted.

Erlend de Groot, 2024

References
J. Jeroense [Hieronymus Sweerts], Koddige en ernstige opschriften, op luyffens, wagens, glazen, uithangborden, en andere taferelen, II, Amsterdam 1700, pp. 125-26; Leupe in F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], II, Rotterdam 1879-80, p. 148; Bredius in ibid., V, 1882-83, pp. 73-74, VI, 1884-87, p. 168; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 8 (1890), pp. 1-17, 217-34, 297-313, esp. p. 306; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, IV, The Hague 1917, pp. 1154, 1158-65, 1167; ibid., V, 1918, pp. 1506, 1579-81; ibid., VII, 1921, pp. 181-82; Gerson in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXVII, Leipzig 1933, p. 471; S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, ‘Kwartierstaat van de kinderen van het eerste echtpaar Dudok van Heel’, Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 26 (1972), pp. 146-80; E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, pp. 800-05; Löffler in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, p. 338; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 164

Entry

This unpretentious table laid with freshwater fish on a strainer is characteristic of De Putter’s work, who painted the subject almost exclusively in remarkably repetitive compositions. In order to show the fish at their most appealing the arrangement is kept plain and simple, while the strainer is placed at an angle, precariously balancing against a bowl and nearly slithering off the wooden table. Depicted are a pike with a bream curled over it and two perch above. There is the head of an unidentified fish between the bream and the perch. The handle of a hook or landing net can be seen left of centre. The artist must have been fond of this specific combination, because he used exactly the same display of pike, bream and perch in many other paintings.4Such as Fish Still Life, The Hague, Museum Bredius; illustrated in E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, p. 803. And Fisherman’s Wife with Freshwater Fish on a Table, Eindhoven, collection R.G. van Leeuwen; illustrated in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, p. 246. The only clue for dating the Rijksmuseum variation on the theme is provided by the dendrochronology, which indicates that it was executed at some point in the last twenty years of De Putter’s career.

The composition is static and the modelling of the fish is rather stiff. They look immobile and do not seem to be sliding down the strainer. On the other hand, the skilful rendering of the scales, turning them into slightly raised and highlighted platelets, gives the fish a remarkably fresh appearance. They seem to have been scooped out of the canal just a moment ago and are still dripping wet.

De Putter’s fish still lifes owe a lot to the earlier Flemish tradition.5On the development of the fish still life see F.G. Meijer, ‘Visstillevens in Holland en Vlaanderen’, in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, pp. 13-73. A very similar assortment is already found in Fish Still Life with Candle of 1611 by the Fleming Clara Peeters.6Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado; illustrated in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, p. 222. De Putter was among the first artists to introduce the genre in the northern Netherlands. His compositions seem to have had some influence on the works of other painters, among them Harmen Steenwijck, Abraham Susenier and Jan Dirven.7See for example SK-A-1528 and SK-A-1529 by Steenwijck in the Rijksmuseum; for Susenier and Dirven see F.G. Meijer, ‘Visstillevens in Holland en Vlaanderen’, in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, pp. 13-73, esp. pp. 66-67 and 39-41.

Erlend de Groot, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, p. 801

Collection catalogues

1887, pp. 137-38, no. 1146 (280b); 1903, p. 215, no. 1924; 1976, p. 457, no. A 1295

Citation

Erlend de Groot, 2024, 'Pieter de Putter, Still Life with Fish, c. 1639 - c. 1659', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200107890

(accessed 7 December 2025 02:32:02).

Footnotes

  • 1Copy RMA.
  • 2NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 166, no. 7 (11 January 1886); NHA, ARS, Kop., inv. 289, pp. 79-80, no. 79 (12 January 1886).
  • 3Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, p. 37.
  • 4Such as Fish Still Life, The Hague, Museum Bredius; illustrated in E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, p. 803. And Fisherman’s Wife with Freshwater Fish on a Table, Eindhoven, collection R.G. van Leeuwen; illustrated in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, p. 246.
  • 5On the development of the fish still life see F.G. Meijer, ‘Visstillevens in Holland en Vlaanderen’, in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, pp. 13-73.
  • 6Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado; illustrated in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, p. 222.
  • 7See for example SK-A-1528 and SK-A-1529 by Steenwijck in the Rijksmuseum; for Susenier and Dirven see F.G. Meijer, ‘Visstillevens in Holland en Vlaanderen’, in L.M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, pp. 13-73, esp. pp. 66-67 and 39-41.