The Merry Peasant

Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 1.3 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1521. The panel could have been ready for use by 1532, but a date in or after 1538 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, rather thick, off-white ground extends over the edges of the support. It consists of white pigment with a minute addition of orange and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed some sketchy lines in a dry medium, also partly visible to the naked eye. They do not appear to bear any resemblance to the final painting.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The figure was left in reserve in the semi-transparent brown initial lay-in. The composition was loosely and sketchily built up with lean, translucent brownish-grey paints, applied thinly with a rather coarse brush. In the final stage small, white highlights were added on the rim and handle of the jug and in the figure’s collar. Slight impasto is particularly apparent in the left background, along the contours and in the figure itself.
Anna Krekeler, 2022

Fair. The paint layers have become slightly transparent. On top of the higher parts of the grain of the wood, in particular, the paint is somewhat abraded. The varnish is thick and has yellowed, and saturates moderately. It shows matte areas, most notably in the lower right corner.

…; from G. van der Hooft, fl. 31.10, to Gerrit van der Pot (1732-1807), Lord of Groeneveld, Rotterdam, 1782;¹¹Journaal Pot van Groeneveld, no. 145: ‘Een vroolijke boer met een kan. Van G. van der Hooft in 1782 gekogt voor f 31.10’. See T. Zeedijk, ‘‘‘Tot Voordeel en Genoegen’’: De schilderijenverzameling van Gerrit van der Pot van Groenevelt’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 55 (2007), pp. 128-207, esp. p. 187, no. 145. his sale, Rotterdam (Gebr. Van Ryp), 6 June 1808 sqq., no. 98, as Isack van Ostade (‘Hoog 6¼, en breed 5¼ duim [16 x 13.5 cm]. Pnl. Een lagchenden Boer, eene aarden kan in de handen houdende. […]’), fl. 36, to J.M. Jorissen, for the museum²²Provenance reconstructed in T. Zeedijk, ‘‘‘Tot Voordeel en Genoegen’’: De schilderijenverzameling van Gerrit van der Pot van Groenevelt’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 55 (2007), pp. 128-207, esp. p. 187, no. 145.

ObjectNumber: SK-A-302

Adriaen van Ostade’s oeuvre includes several half-length paintings and etchings of individual peasants.⁴⁴For examples of his etched peasant heads see L.J. Slatkes (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, I, New York 1978, pp. 327-28, nos. 1-4. The painted ones are usually rendered with a limited palette of browns and blacks, and are often shown, as here, with their bodies leaning to the right or left. Their simple, and in some instances torn clothing identify them as peasants. The present figure holds a broken stoneware jug, which obviously contains the source of his merriment. Van Ostade’s earliest dated picture of a peasant half-length is from 1637.⁵⁵A Study of a Peasant Smoking a Pipe; with the dealer Bijl-Van Urk Master Paintings, Alkmaar, 2014. See D. Hirschfelder, Tronie und Porträt in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2008, pp. 158, 419, nos. 362-67 for other examples. The sketchy treatment in the Rijksmuseum panel is very close to that in the Head of a Laughing Peasant by Van Ostade now in Rotterdam, the inscribed year of which, as Lammertse has persuasively argued, should be read as ‘1646’.⁶⁶Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Lammertse in F. Lammertse, J. Giltaij and A. Janssen, Dutch Genre Paintings of the 17th Century, coll. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 1998, pp. 130-31, no. 43 (ill.). Were it not for the fact that the figures in both the Amsterdam and Rotterdam paintings lean in the same direction, one could readily imagine that they were conceived as pendants, given their similar brushwork and dimensions.

Two of Van Ostade’s etched peasant tronies are very similar to engraved ones in two series which, according to the inscriptions, were conceived by Pieter Brueghel I.⁷⁷For Van Ostade’s etchings see L.J. Slatkes (ed.), The Illustrated Bartsch, I, New York 1978, p. 327, no. 1, p. 328, no. 4. For Brueghel’s engravings see R. Van Bastelaer, Les estampes de Peter Bruegel l’Ancien, Brussels 1908, pp. 69-70; F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, III, Amsterdam 1950, pp. 310-11. For his painted versions, however, Van Ostade seems to have been particularly indebted to the work of Adriaen Brouwer. The latter’s extant tronies are assigned by scholars to his Antwerp period (c. 1631-38),⁸⁸For their dating see, for example, K. Renger, ‘Brouwers Werk: Voraussetzungen, Entwicklung, Nachfolge’, in K. Renger and H. von Sonnenburg, Adriaen Brouwer und das niederländische Bauerngenre 1600-1660, exh. cat. Munich (Alte Pinakothek) 1986, pp. 45-70, esp. p. 52. but their presence in some seventeenth-century Dutch inventories suggests that Van Ostade could have seen examples in the northern Netherlands as well.⁹⁹For Dutch inventories listing tronies by Brouwer see D. Hirschfelder, Tronie und Porträt in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2008, p. 160, note 318. Prints after Brouwer’s pictures, especially a series of engravings of half-length peasants from about 1634 attributed to Coenraad Waumans, were probably even more instrumental in Van Ostade’s knowledge of the Flemish master’s designs.¹⁰¹⁰See, especially, Lammertse in F. Lammertse, J. Giltaij and A. Janssen, Dutch Genre Paintings of the 17th Century, coll. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 1998, p. 130. For the prints in question see H. Scholz, Brouwer invenit: Druckgraphische Reproduktionen des 17.-19. Jahrhunderts nach Gemälden und Zeichnungen Adriaen Brouwers, Marburg 1985, pp. 160-65, nos. 111-22 (ill.).

In his Schilder-boeck of 1604, Karel van Mander praised Pieter Brueghel’s ability to capture the ‘boorish stupidity’ (‘Boerigh dom wesen’) of peasants.¹¹¹¹K. van Mander, Het Schilder-Boeck waer in Voor eerst de leerlustighe Iueght den grondt der Edel Vry Schilderconst in Verscheyden deelen Wort Voorgedraghen: Daer nae in dry deelen ’t leven der vermaerde doorluchtighe Schilders des ouden, en nieuwen tyds: Eyntlyck d’wtlegghinghe op den Metamorphoseon pub. Ouidij Nasonis (…), Haarlem 1604, fol. 233r. This quality can also be found in abundance in many of Van Ostade’s paintings of the subject, especially the early ones. An example is a 1640 tronie in which the figure’s alcohol consumption has rendered him truly stupid – he is squinting and his tongue is lolling out of the side of his mouth.¹²¹²Present whereabouts unknown; illustrated in Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings, dealer cat. London/Maastricht (Robert Noortman Gallery) 1993, no. 27. Despite his crude facial features, the country bumpkin in the Rijksmuseum picture has nothing of this ‘boorish stupidity’ about him. The laughter brought on by his inebriation is almost infectious, inviting the viewer to take pleasure in the peasant’s merriment rather than laugh at his oafish demeanour.

Van Ostade’s peasant tronies may have served an educational function in his studio. Johan van Gool reports in his Nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen that during his training Willem Doudyns ‘had painted half-length peasants by Van Ostade which he gave to his pupils to copy’.¹³¹³J. van Gool, De nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen: Waer in de levens- en kunstbedryven er tans levende en reets overleedene schilders, die van Houbraken, noch eenig ander schryver, zyn aengeteekend, verhaelt worden, I, The Hague 1750, p. 359: ‘(...) in zyn leertyt, Boertjes van Ostade halflyfs geschildert had, die hy zynen Leerlingen te copiëeren gaf’. It is presumed here that Van Ostade, and not Doudyns, had his pupils copy these tronies. See also D. Hirschfelder, Tronie und Porträt in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2008, p. 162, where the quotation from Van Gool is discussed in this context. Another apprentice of Van Ostade, Cornelis Dusart, acquired the contents of his master’s workshop upon the latter’s death in 1685.¹⁴¹⁴P. Biesboer, Collections of Paintings in Haarlem 1572-1745: Documents for the History of Collecting: Netherlandish Inventories I, Los Angeles 2001, p. 301. As Hirschfelder has pointed out, almost half of the paintings by Van Ostade himself in the studio estate were tronies, which reinforces the hypothesis that they were used for instruction.¹⁵¹⁵D. Hirschfelder, Tronie und Porträt in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2008, p. 163. A seventeenth-century copy after the present picture at auction in Vienna in 1993 also supports this supposition.¹⁶¹⁶Sale, Vienna (Dorotheum), 20 October 1993, no. 309. The Merry Peasant would, in that event, have provided an example for learning how to render facial expressions, in this case laughter.

Jonathan Bikker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, III, Esslingen/Paris 1910, p. 188, no. 138; D. Hirschfelder, Tronie und Porträt in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2008, pp. 186, 228, 419, no. 367; A. Ebert, Adriaen van Ostade und die komische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2013, pp. 107, 148, 150

1809, p. 53, no. 229 (as Isack van Ostade); 1843, p. 45, no. 236 (as Isack van Ostade; ‘the oak visible’); 1853, p. 21, no. 207 (fl. 300); 1858, p. 104, no. 230 (as Isack van Ostade); 1880, p. 240, no. 264; 1887, p. 128, no. 1074; 1903, p. 202, no. 1816; 1934, p. 216, no. 1816; 1960, p. 234, no. 1816; 1976, p. 430, no. A 302

Jonathan Bikker, 2022, 'Adriaen van Ostade, The Merry Peasant, c. 1646', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4904