Sand cast in two main parts (figure and base). Thin, organic patina. Most likely cast during the 19th or early 20th century in France or Belgium.
Alloy figure leaded brass alloy with some tin and low impurities. Cu 72.19%; Sn 2.73%; Zn 19.99%; Pb 3.71%; Fe 0.52%; Ni 0.04%; Ag 0.09%; Sb 0.1%; As 0.13%; Bi 0.22%
Alloy base leaded brass alloy with some tin and low impurities
Cu 75.99%; Sn 2.31%; Zn 15.51%; Pb 4.78%; Fe 0.54%; Ni 0.05%; Ag 0.07%; Sb 0.04%; As 0.1%; Bi 0.39%

A. Pappot, Technical Note, Hurdy-Gurdy Player, BK-2006-25, 3 April 2025

…; from sale London (Christie’s), 7 December 2006, no. 111, £3,384 (€4,987.50), presented to the museum by C. Humphris, London

Object number: BK-2006-25

Credit line: Purchased with the support of C. Humphris, London

In the art of the Low Countries, peasants, beggars and vagrants were often presented by and for the social upper class as negative role models serving to confirm their own superiority. Poverty and begging were initially seen in a positive light, as mendicants, after all, inspired the giving of alms. From the sixteenth century on, however, the poor and downtrodden beggar began to take on a more negative association, with poverty viewed as a threat to society’s well-being in the form of laziness and wastefulness. Civic culture and a sense of public moral duty were firmly rooted in notions of stability, family life and work ethic. As these values came to be more highly regarded, the beggar found himself increasingly relegated to the position of a socially undesirable figure. Besides deformity, invalidity and delinquency, lunacy was also attributed to such persons, who were (consequently) considered amusing and comical. Coinciding with the emergence and flourishing of civic culture in the late fifteenth century, mendicant figures also began to appear in Netherlandish art. Only in the eighteenth century would the theme undergo a certain process of aestheticization, becoming a picturesque and entertaining theme versus a crude, negative model.¹¹P. Vandenbroeck, Beeld van de andere, vertoog over het zelf. Over wilden en narren, boeren en bedelaars, Antwerp 1987, pp. 117-21.

The profession of street musician – like the hurdy-gurdy player depicted here – was judged disreputable, as was that of other itinerant types, e.g. performance artists, rat catchers, quacksalvers and scissors sharpeners. In art, characters of this kind were often paired with ‘bona fide’ beggars.²²P. Vandenbroeck, Beeld van de andere, vertoog over het zelf. Over wilden en narren, boeren en bedelaars, Antwerp 1987, pp. 121, 124. Even early on, hurdy-gurdy players were seen as prototypes of the blind beggars found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Flemish and Netherlandish art, though they also commonly appear in French and Spanish painting.³³P. Vandenbroeck, Beeld van de andere, vertoog over het zelf. Over wilden en narren, boeren en bedelaars, Antwerp 1987, figs. 147-51. Invariably, these figures are accompanied by a young helper and/or a dog. The present sitting hurdy-gurdy player possesses all the characteristics typically associated with street musicians: ragtag attire, wearing tattered shoes and socks and a dilapidated hat, and having long hair. His grimace is repulsive, while his empty gaze betrays his blindness. A little dog lies between his feet. The anonymous sculptor who modelled this bronze chose for a pose based on an ostensible ‘contrapposto’, with one leg resting solidly on the ground with the other leg dangling free, and an emphatic distinction between the tilted shoulders and the sidelong positioning of the head. This instils liveliness in the beggar’s figure and creates a dynamic composition, thus distinguishing this piece from most of the other bronzes in this genre.⁴⁴Good exceptions are Jan Pieter van Baurscheit’s terracotta figures of a bagpipe player and a hurdy-gurdy player, Brussels, Art and History Museum, inv. nos. Sc. 93 and 94, see KIK-IRPA, object nos. 20042620 and 20042621.

The Hurdy-Gurdy Player belongs to a small group of chiefly bronze beggars and tronies, traditionally seen as works of Netherlandish production. The majority are substantially smaller in size than the present bronze, moreover simple in modelling and casting.⁵⁵F. Scholten, ‘Bronze Sculpture in the Netherlands’, in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, pp. 13-21, esp. p. 17 and fig. 8, see also ibid. no. 44. Most likely is that these elementary bronzes were produced in the late seventeenth century or the first half of the eighteenth century in Antwerp, where this so-called lowlife genre also flourished in painting. A strong indicator of this origin is the bronze group of two sitting troublemakers, one shown filling his pipe and the other holding a beer tankard.⁶⁶F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, fig. 44a. The bronze was held in the collection of the dealer G. Cramer, The Hague (Antiekbeurs Delft 1955). In composition and iconography, the group is a variant of a large, signed terracotta group by the Antwerp sculptor Jan Pieter van Baurscheit I, today preserved in the Rijksmuseum (BK-2006-19).⁷⁷For this group, see E. Bijzet, ‘Waer in den Aert en Stand zijn uitgedrukt heel stout: Pieter van Baurscheits Drinkebroers en de boertige kunst in de Nederlanden’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 56 (2008), pp. 424-45. The same two figures again appear in virtually identical form as two individual statuettes, as does a variant of the man with the beer tankard.⁸⁸London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. nos. A.46-1956 and A.47-1956; sale London (Sotheby’s), 13 May 2009, no. 350. While less refined than Baurscheit’s group, all these works are clearly derived from it, thus providing a strong indication of the composition’s popularity. Other statuettes from the same group centre on subjects such as standing peasant couples, beggars and peddlers, typically resting on square bases and executed in the form of rather heavy brass casts.⁹⁹See for example sale London (Bonhams), 11 December 2007, nos. 513-15, 524 and sale London (Christie’s), 7 December 2006, no. 112 (two standing terracotta figures of a singing hurdy-gurdy player and a dancing man). Also commonly encountered are miniature bust depictions of ‘tronies’, i.e. actors with grimacing facial expressions, and farcical parodies of Heraclitus and Democritus.¹⁰¹⁰F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 44 (and figs. 44b and c). First to introduce the beggar genre in the Dutch Republic was the Antwerp sculptor Pieter Xaveri (1647-1673), who produced a number of terracotta genre figures in Leiden in the 1670s, including a Hurdy-Gurdy Player in the Rijksmuseum (BK-1978-36).

A presumed later version of the present Hurdy-Gurdy Player also exists.¹¹¹¹Stuttgart, Nagel Auktionen (written communication Daniel Cremene, 10 September 2012). Forming its pendant is the figure of a woman fortune teller, accompanied by a cat, which emerges halfway from beneath her skirt. Given the striking agreement in style, pose and size, both bronze statuettes were unquestionably conceived as pendants. Like this work, the Amsterdam bronze also probably had a female pendant.

The popularity of the beggar’s genre in cabinet sculpture was by no means limited to the Low Countries. Because of their picturesque and comical character, comparable figures were in great demand during the eighteenth century, particularly in France, with statuettes executed in bronze, ivory and porcelain.¹²¹²For example, two farcically attired statuettes of Aesop and Diogenes attributed to Pierre Legros I, see E. Szmodis-Eszlary, ‘Trois petits bronzes de l’atelier de Pierre Legros I’, Bulletin de Musée hongrois des Beaux-Arts 1973, pp. 41-48; for a pair once in the possession of C.G. Tessin (1757), see L.O. Larsson, European Bronzes 1450-1700, coll. cat. Stockholm (Swedish National Art Museums) 1992, no. 14. Consequently, a number of the bronze figures traditionally attributed to the Netherlands may have been produced in France. This could also be the case with the present Hurdy-Gurdy Player, which, with its careful modelling, refined finishing, rich patina and larger scale, clearly surpasses the majority of these figures. To be considered is a Flemish model entering French hands, thereafter refined, cast and finished according to a local predilection for deep ruddy, transparent patinas. The alloy composition and casting technique suggest that the present bronze was made in the nineteenth or early twentieth century.

Frits Scholten, 2025

F. Scholten, ‘Recent acquisitions (2004-09) of sculpture at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam’, The Burlington Magazine 51 (2009), p. 810, no. X

F. Scholten, 2025, 'anonymous, _, Southern Netherlands, c. 1800 - c. 1900', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), _European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20074228