Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 40 and 5.5 cm), 0.7 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that both planks are from the same tree and that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1627. The panel could have been ready for use by 1638, but a date in or after 1644 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The smooth double ground extends over the edges of the support. The first, semi-opaque, off-white layer is followed by a semi-opaque, pale brown ground consisting of white, yellow, orange, red, brown and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front, with each layer applied wet in wet. The brown background colour of the buildings was left open to serve as a mid-tone in the figures and other foreground details. The fluid, opaque and semi-opaque paint was applied in thin, smooth layers with a little impasto created by the stiffer paint used for the highlights. The figures are fully worked up with careful blending, and brushstrokes are visible only in the sky. Cross-sections show that the darkest passages consist of semi-transparent, medium rich paint containing small opaque black, brown, red, orange and yellow, and large transparent red pigment particles. The grey passages in the sky consist of opaque white and black pigments only.
Emma Boyce, 2022

Fair. There is a difference in level in the right-hand part of the join, running approx. 20 cm from the right. The ground and paint layers are cracked along the entire length of the join. There are microscopic drying cracks in the brown passages and the black paint layers are slightly abraded. Numerous crater-like holes, some filled with a glassy substance, probably metal soap protrusions, have formed all over the surface (although primarily in the sky and other pale passages). The thick varnish has significantly and unevenly yellowed, and although it retains its gloss it does not saturate well.

…; bequeathed by Daniel Franken Dzn (1838-1898), Amsterdam and Le Vésinet, to the museum, with 54 other paintings, 1898¹¹Verslagen omtrent ’s Rijks verzamelingen van geschiedenis en kunst 1898 (annual report of the Rijksmuseum), p. 29.

Object number: SK-A-1732

Credit line: D. Franken Bequest, Le Vésinet

Sybrand van Beest painted many kinds of market, not only for vegetables but also for fish, pigs, horses and cheese, and in wintertime too. The location is occasionally identified by the buildings in the background, mainly church towers. Most of the scenes are set in The Hague.⁹⁹One exception is a horse fair in Valkenburg, although that is not far from The Hague, now in Douai, Musée de la Chartreuse; illustrated in F. Baligand, Peinture hollandaise: Catalogue Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, coll. cat. Douai 1978, p. 14.

Van Beest’s earliest dated work of this kind is from 1632 and is of a vegetable market,¹⁰¹⁰Private collection; illustrated in the catalogue for the sale, Amsterdam (Sotheby’s), 6 May 1997, no. 17. Buijsen 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. 93, says that the earliest dated one is from 1638. while his last one is from 1668 and features a pig market near the Sint-Jacobskerk in The Hague.¹¹¹¹Stockholm, Nationalmuseum; illustrated in G. Cavalli-Björkman, C. Fryklund and K. Side´n, Dutch and Flemish Paintings, II: Dutch Paintings c. 1600-c. 1800, coll. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2005, p. 68. This means that he painted this type of scene almost throughout his career. The Rijksmuseum’s picture is dated 1646, and most of the other ones are from both the 1640s and ’50s and display little if any stylistic development.

Van Beest was able to paint a relatively large number of markets by varying on the same composition over and over again. That is also the case with the wares on sale; the bunch of carrots and the green cabbages in the right foreground of this picture are found almost literally in several other works. However, he never repeated the staffage. Here the crowd on the square is set against the backdrop of some dilapidated houses. In the left and right foreground two scenes have been singled out for enlargement, as it were, with the figures being bigger and more clear-cut than the others. On the left an old woman and a child approach a young market seller seated with her merchandise beside her. A much better-dressed boy is looking at them. On the right a couple are standing behind their stall and selling vegetables to an elegantly attired lady.

The contrast between simply clad market folk and more neatly dressed members of the public is a recurring theme in Van Beest’s work. Although that distinction is also a feature of genre pieces by other artists from around the middle of the century, Van Beest was one of the few who made a point of highlighting it by enlarging the figures. This sets his scenes apart from those by Hendrick Sorgh and Gabriel Metsu, although they do recall Van Beest’s. They too painted different kinds of market with interplay between the public and the stallholders located in an urban surrounding. Sorgh’s compositions, though, are usually simpler than Van Beest’s, with any action shifted off to one side. Metsu’s figures are more refined than Sorgh’s and Van Beest’s. The latter usually have a pronounced colouration with eye-catching red accents, such as the blouse of the stallholder in the right foreground and the sleeves of the old woman on the left. The artist also paid loving attention to anecdotal details.¹²¹²Buijsen 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. 93.

Marrigje Rikken, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Dumas in C. Dumas and J. van der Meer Mohr, Haagse stadsgezichten 1550-1800: Topografische schilderijen van het Haags Historisch Museum, coll. cat. The Hague 1991, p. 684

1903, p. 43, no. 456; 1976, p. 107, no. A 1732

Marrigje Rikken, 2022, 'Sybrand van Beest, Vegetable Market, 1646', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20015880