Elegant Company Dining in the Open Air

The oak support consists of two horizontally grained planks and is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1593. The panel could have been ready for use by 1604, but a date in or after 1610 is more likely. The ground is off-white. Some underdrawing is visible in the couple on the left. There are several small changes to the original design, for example in the position of the woman’s head, which was turned slightly towards the viewer in the design. The figures were reserved in the landscape. The paint was applied smoothly and opaquely, with impasted highlights.

Fair. The paint layers are severely abraded. There is an area of discoloured retouching at lower right. The greens of the background appear to have darkened. The varnish layer was unevenly applied and is matte at the retouchings.

...; collection Carel Vosmaer (1826-88), The Hague, 1872;¹¹Label on the reverse of the painting. his widow;²²Label on the reverse of the painting. from whom to Daniel Franken Dzn (1838-98), Amsterdam and Le Vésinet, 1896;³³Label on the reverse of the painting. by whom bequeathed to the museum, June 1898

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1765

Credit line: D. Franken Bequest, Le Vésinet

This painting of 1615 with a festive group of people in a garden is one of the earliest dated works in the oeuvre of Esaias van de Velde. Four couples are eating, drinking, playing music and courting in a more or less symmetrical composition in which the page pouring wine behind the table occupies the central position. Van de Velde treated a similar subject the previous year in a painting that is now in the Mauritshuis.⁴⁴Illustrated in coll. cat. The Hague 2004b, p. 317, no. 199.

The theme of elegant people out in the open air was a popular one in late 16th-century printmaking, but in painting it was mainly the preserve of Haarlem artists in the 1610s and the first half of the 1620s.⁵⁵On this see Kolfin 2005, pp. 103-07. See Keyes 1984, pp. 77-86, for the roots of the genre. The Flemish immigrant David Vinckboons played an important part in popularizing the genre (cf. SK-A-2109). Various authors have drawn attention to Vinckboons’s influence on this painting,⁶⁶Bol 1969, p. 135; Haak 1984, p. 187; Kolfin 2005, p. 104. but here Van de Velde adopted his own approach to the subject. The figures in Vinckboons’s outdoor scenes, as well as in Van de Velde’s Mauritshuis painting, are seen in a park with a castle in the distance, but here the focus is on the group around the table. Keyes believes that the young artist may have been inspired by a lost painting in Vinckboons’s style by Van de Velde’s fellow townsman Frans Hals,⁷⁷Keyes 1984, p. 80; illustrated in Slive I, 1970, p. 31. while Kloek comments on the affinities with the work of Willem Pietersz Buytewech, who worked in Haarlem for a while from 1612 and who painted at least one outdoor gathering.⁸⁸Kloek in Amsterdam 1993, p. 618; Buytewech’s painting (canvas, 71 x 94 cm) is illustrated on p. 90, fig. 153.

Although not set in an elegant garden, this scene clearly belongs in the visual tradition of the Garden of Love.⁹⁹Kloek 1993, p. 91; Kloek in Amsterdam 1993, p. 618. The man seated to the left of the table is holding hands with the woman sitting beside him and is resting his leg on her knee, while the seated man on the right has caught hold of the clothing of the woman standing before him. According to Keyes, who draws attention to the negative connotations of the wine cooler and the peacock pie, the scene has to be interpreted in a moralistic light.¹⁰¹⁰Keyes 1984, pp. 81-82. On this see also Brown 1984, pp. 160-80, who reproduces the painting in the same context. Kolfin, on the other hand, says that scenes of this kind by Esaias van de Velde should be taken more light-heartedly.¹¹¹¹Kolfin 2005, p. 105. For the iconography of Van de Velde’s outdoor scenes see also Luijten in Amsterdam 1997, pp. 158-59, 183-86; Kolfin in Haarlem-Hamburg 2003, pp. 64-66; Franits 2004, pp. 18-22.

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. 285.

Keyes 1984, pp. 81-82, 135, no. 59, with earlier literature; Kloek in Amsterdam 1993, p. 618, no. 289

1903, p. 273, no. 2451; 1934, p. 289, no. 2451; 1960, p. 314, no. 2451; 1976, p. 558, no. A 1765; 2007, no. 285

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Esaias van de Velde, Elegant Company Dining in the Open Air, 1615', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026824