Vlaams dorp met een poppenspeler en een klein publiek

Peeter Gijsels, ca. 1650 - ca. 1660

Gezicht in een Vlaams dorp. Op de voorgrond staat een groep toeschouwers rond een man met een dansende hond, rechts verkoopt een vrouw vis. Links dansende boeren voor een herberg waarlangs een huifkar rijdt. Meer naar achteren loopt de weg langs een water met boten tussen de huizen van het dorp. In de verte een kerk.

  • Soort kunstwerkschilderij
  • ObjectnummerSK-A-126
  • Afmetingendrager: hoogte 27,8 cm x breedte 34,2 cm, buitenmaat: diepte 6,5 cm (drager incl. SK-L-2391)
  • Fysieke kenmerkenolieverf op koper

Peeter Gijsels

Village with a Puppeteer Entertaining a Small Crowd

c. 1650 - c. 1660

Inscriptions

  • signature, bottom right:p:Gijs[?]sels

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: Z. Benders, RMA, 27 mei 2009

Conservation

  • W.A. Hopman, mei 1874: varnish regenerated

Provenance

…; collection Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague; his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘Pierre Gijzels. Tableau très soigné, représentant un village avec quantité de chariots, de chevaux & c., cuivre, h. 10¾ l. 13 [28 x 34 cm]’);1‘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. 34. There were no additions made to the Van Heteren collection after Adriaan’s death in 1800, so it is safe to assume that SK-A-126 was acquired by him. 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 1809;2T.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. 58, notes 2-3. on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 1999-2011

Object number: SK-A-126

The artist

Biography

Peeter Gijsels (Antwerp 1621 - Antwerp 1690/1691)

The landscape and still-life painter Peeter Gijsels was baptized in the Sint-Jacobskerk, Antwerp, on 13 December 1621, the son of Peeter and Lucia Adriaens. His father, a poor rope maker, died in 1625. His mother brought her small family up in poverty; nevertheless, her son was able to buy, in 1641/42,3P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, pp. 131, 134. an apprenticeship, but unusually late for he was about twenty years old, with the now obscure Jan Boets (or Boots; 1603-after 1684) with whom he remained for about eight to nine years, becoming a master in 1649/50.4P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, p. 210. On 13 November 1650, he married Joanna Huybrechts in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, from which union there issued six children. His wife died in 1680/81, he followed in 1690/91.

Gijsels was early admired for his paintings in the style of Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625); indeed, his biographer Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) believed that he was his (or his son’s) pupil.5A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlandtsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III, p. 41. In fact his master, Jan Boets,6He gave his age as a witness in 1658 as 55, 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, VIII, p. 6, and was still alive in 1684, according to a notarised statement, Ibid., XI, pp. 269-70. was known as a copyist of the elder Brueghel;7J. Denucé, Na Peter Pauwel Rubens, Antwerp 1949, pp. 249, 282, 285 etc.; 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. 90. and thus Gijsels would have become acquainted with his art in Boets’s studio. Probably later in his career, he became more indiscriminate in his choice of artistic mentors. There are landscapes in the style of Cornelis (1607/08-1681) and Herman (1609-1685) Saftleven,8J. Sander and B. Brinkman, Niederländische Gemälde vor 1800 im Städel/Netherlandish Painting before 1800 at the Städel, Franfurt am Main (Städtische Galerie und Städelsches Kunstinstitut) 1995-98, pp. 61, 33-34. and perhaps his depictions of elegantly attired revellers owed much to the work of Jan van der Hecke (1620-1684).9Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, pp. 6-7. He executed still lifes in the style of Jacob van Es (c. 1596-1666)10O. Koester, Flemish Paintings, 1600-1800, Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2000, p. 119, KM Ssp. 271, and pl. 59. and Jan Davidsz de Heem (1601-1684)11Anonymous sale, London (Robinson and Fisher), 24 June 1937, no. 37 (photograph Witt Library, London). which were very different from his more original, late style. His extant oeuvre is not large and dated works are few.12Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 238.

He took time to make his mark, for Cornelis de Bie did not mention him in his Het gulden cabinet of 1661. But he wrote in praise of him in his annotated copy of the book. There he described Gijsels’s solitary nature; indeed, it is noteworthy that he never became an officer of the guild and is not recorded as having taken in apprentices.

REFERENCES
F.J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpsche schilderschool, 3 vols., Antwerp 1883, III, pp. 39-42

Entry

Although not referred to in the survey of Gijsels’s oeuvre by Thiéry and Kervyn de Meerendré,13Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 238. there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this signed picture.

The formula adopted here by Gijsels was repeated in, for instance, his destroyed View of a Village, formerly in the Gemäldegalerie, Alte Mester, Dresden,14Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 8. and in his Kermesse of 1687 in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.15Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 9; Catalogus Schilderkunst, Oude Meesters, Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1988, p. 173, no. 885. This showed a village occupying much of the composition with a waterway on the right.

The landscape and figure types are handled in the manner of Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625). The costumes of the well-dressed couple are approximately of the second decade of the century. Several figures have their counterparts in landscapes by the elder artist: the seated peasant woman left in an example in the Gemäldegalerie, Alte Meister, Dresden,16K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625): Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Cologne 1979, p. 50, fig. 17. and that facing left in the Rome Palazzo Spada landscape;17K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625): Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Cologne 1979, p. 85, fig. 36. the fishwife is found facing right in a view formerly with David Koetser,18K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625): Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Cologne 1979, p. 57, fig. 27. and a variant of the boy begging in the Village Road with Cattle, Betty and David M. Koetser Foundation, Zürich.19C. Klemm, The Paintings of the Betty and David M. Koetser Foundation, Doornspijk 1988, no. 8. Indeed, it might well be said that the Rijksmuseum picture is a pastiche of the art of Jan Brueghel I.

There are no comparable dated works by Gijsels, but it seems likely that the present picture was executed early in his career. The puppeteer with the dog reappears as a musician in the Kermesse of 1680 in the Augsburg Staatsgalerie.20Katalog der Königl. filial-Gemäldegalerie zu Augsburg, (Munich) 1912, p. 27, no. 2501. A similar puppeteer was depicted by David Teniers II (1610-1690) in the picture of the 1640s in the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.21X. Egorova, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts: The Netherlands XV-XVI centuries, Flanders XVII-XVIII Centuries, Belgium XIX-XX Centuries: Collection of Paintings, Moscow 1998, p. 169, no. 117. Another was the subject of a signed and dated painting of 1667 by Adriaan Rombouts.22Anonymous sale, Brussels (Fievez), 17-18 December 1926; illustrated in J. de Maere and M. Wabbes, Illustrated Dictionary of 17th century Flemish Painters, 3 vols., Brussels 1994, II, p. 996. An earlier similarly dressed jester is depicted in the middle ground of Pieter Brueghel II’s (1564-1638) Kermesse of St George, probably of the 1620s.23Anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 8 December 2010, no. 8.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

Zoege von Manteuffel in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 33 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XV, p. 379

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 25, no. 103; 1843, p. 22, no. 103 [‘sound’]; 1853, p. 11, no. 91 [fl. 800]; 1858, p. 403, no. 473; 1885, p. 70, no. 473; 1887, p. 53, no. 420; 1903, p. 109, no. 1007; 1976, p. 251, no. A 126

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Peeter Gijsels, Village with a Puppeteer Entertaining a Small Crowd, c. 1650 - c. 1660', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027929

(accessed 9 December 2025 06:32:17).

Footnotes

  • 1‘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. 34. There were no additions made to the Van Heteren collection after Adriaan’s death in 1800, so it is safe to assume that SK-A-126 was acquired by him.
  • 2T.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. 58, notes 2-3.
  • 3P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, pp. 131, 134.
  • 4P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76 (reprint Amsterdam 1961), II, p. 210.
  • 5A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlandtsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, III, p. 41.
  • 6He gave his age as a witness in 1658 as 55, 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, VIII, p. 6, and was still alive in 1684, according to a notarised statement, Ibid., XI, pp. 269-70.
  • 7J. Denucé, Na Peter Pauwel Rubens, Antwerp 1949, pp. 249, 282, 285 etc.; 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. 90.
  • 8J. Sander and B. Brinkman, Niederländische Gemälde vor 1800 im Städel/Netherlandish Painting before 1800 at the Städel, Franfurt am Main (Städtische Galerie und Städelsches Kunstinstitut) 1995-98, pp. 61, 33-34.
  • 9Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, pp. 6-7.
  • 10O. Koester, Flemish Paintings, 1600-1800, Copenhagen (Statens Museum for Kunst) 2000, p. 119, KM Ssp. 271, and pl. 59.
  • 11Anonymous sale, London (Robinson and Fisher), 24 June 1937, no. 37 (photograph Witt Library, London).
  • 12Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 238.
  • 13Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 238.
  • 14Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 8.
  • 15Y. Thiéry and M. Kervyn de Meerendré, Les peintres flamands de paysage au XVIIe siècle: Le baroque anversois et l’école bruxelloise, Brussels 1987, p. 9; Catalogus Schilderkunst, Oude Meesters, Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten) 1988, p. 173, no. 885.
  • 16K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625): Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Cologne 1979, p. 50, fig. 17.
  • 17K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625): Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Cologne 1979, p. 85, fig. 36.
  • 18K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568-1625): Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, Cologne 1979, p. 57, fig. 27.
  • 19C. Klemm, The Paintings of the Betty and David M. Koetser Foundation, Doornspijk 1988, no. 8.
  • 20Katalog der Königl. filial-Gemäldegalerie zu Augsburg, (Munich) 1912, p. 27, no. 2501.
  • 21X. Egorova, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts: The Netherlands XV-XVI centuries, Flanders XVII-XVIII Centuries, Belgium XIX-XX Centuries: Collection of Paintings, Moscow 1998, p. 169, no. 117.
  • 22Anonymous sale, Brussels (Fievez), 17-18 December 1926; illustrated in J. de Maere and M. Wabbes, Illustrated Dictionary of 17th century Flemish Painters, 3 vols., Brussels 1994, II, p. 996.
  • 23Anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 8 December 2010, no. 8.