Aan de slag met de collectie:
Man die aan het bikkelen is
Jan Baptist Weenix, ca. 1642 - ca. 1647
- Soort kunstwerktekening
- ObjectnummerRP-T-1899-A-4239
- Afmetingenhoogte 267 mm x breedte 180 mm
- Fysieke kenmerkenzwart en wit krijt, op blauw papier; kaderlijnen in bruine inkt
Ontdek verder
Identificatie
Titel(s)
Man die aan het bikkelen is
Objecttype
Objectnummer
RP-T-1899-A-4239
Opschriften / Merken
- inscriptie, verso, handgeschreven: ‘22 / i.nc.’ in potlood
- verzamelaarsmerk, verso, gestempeld: merk van het museum (L. 2228)
- inscriptie, verso, handgeschreven: ‘Palamedes’ in potlood, in een 19e-eeuwse hand
Onderdeel van catalogus
Vervaardiging
Vervaardiging
tekenaar: Jan Baptist Weenix, Rome (mogelijk)
Datering
ca. 1642 - ca. 1647
Zoek verder op
Materiaal en techniek
Fysieke kenmerken
zwart en wit krijt, op blauw papier; kaderlijnen in bruine inkt
Afmetingen
hoogte 267 mm x breedte 180 mm
Dit werk gaat over
Onderwerp
Tentoonstellingen
Verwerving en rechten
Verwerving
aankoop 1899-06
Copyright
Herkomst
…; sale, Anna Johanna Suzanna van Kinschot-Luden (1824-97, Amsterdam) et al., Amsterdam, (F. Muller), 31 January 1899 _sqq_., no. 777, as Anthonie Palamedesz, fl. 41, to the dealer H.J. Valk, Amsterdam;{Copy RMA.} from whom, as Anthonie Palamedesz, fl. 47.15, to the museum (L. 2228), 1899
Documentatie
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Jan Baptist Weenix
Study of a Man Playing Knucklebones
? Rome, c. 1642 - c. 1647
Inscriptions
inscribed on verso, in pencil, in nineteenth-century hands: lower left, Palamedes; lower centre, 22; lower right, i.nc.
stamped on verso: lower right, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)
Technical notes
watermark: none
Provenance
…; sale, Anna Johanna Suzanna van Kinschot-Luden (1824-97, Amsterdam) et al., Amsterdam, (F. Muller), 31 January 1899 sqq., no. 777, as Anthonie Palamedesz, fl. 41, to the dealer H.J. Valk, Amsterdam;1Copy RMA. from whom, as Anthonie Palamedesz, fl. 47.15, to the museum (L. 2228), 1899
Object number: RP-T-1899-A-4239
The artist
Biography
Jan Baptist Weenix (Amsterdam 1621 – c. 1659 De Haar)
He was the son of the Enkhuizen (house) painter Jan Jansz Weines (?-?). According to Houbraken, who was quite accurately informed by Weenix’s son, Jan Weenix (1641-1719), he trained successively with Jan Micker (1599-1664) in Amsterdam, Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651) in Utrecht and finally with Claes Moeyaert (1591-1655) in Amsterdam. In 1639 he married Josina (1619-1662), a daughter of the painter Gillis d’Hondecoeter (1575-1638). Despite the fairly recent birth of his son Jan, he decided in March 1643 to go to Rome (via Rouen) ‘to put his art to the test’, as he himself put it. In Rome he joined the Bentvueghels (Northern artists’ society) and was given the nickname ‘Rattle’ (‘Ratel’), because he ‘was hasty in his speech and spoke somewhat jerkily’. Houbraken noted that he worked for Camillo Pamphili (1622-1666), who was made a cardinal in 1644. Invoices in the Pamphili archive also show that he supplied several paintings to Camillo’s uncle, Pope Innocent X (reg. 1644-55), in 1645-46. After his return from Italy, the connection with the pope gave him the idea of signing his works ‘Gio[vanni] Batt[ist]a Weenix’, those being Innocent’s original given names (Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphilj). Weenix was back in Amsterdam in 1647, and that is where Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613-1670) painted his portrait (now lost). Two years later he settled in Utrecht, where he became a warden of the Guild of St Luke in 1649 and remained until 1656. He spent the last years of his life in the Kasteel Ter Meij, a country house near De Haar, near Utrecht, which he rented from the nobleman Hendrik Valckenaer (d. 1669). His belongings were auctioned there on 25 April 1659, so that is very probably where he died earlier that year.
Jan Baptist Weenix was a versatile artist. He owes his fame mainly to his Italianate landscapes and harbour views, but he also painted still-lives, portraits and history pieces. Just over a dozen of the surviving paintings are dated, the earliest is the Blinding of Tobit of 1642 in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. 1204 (OK)),2W. Stechow, ‘Jan Baptist Weenix’, The Art Quarterly 11 (1948), Stechow 1948, p. 184. and the last is the Italian Landscape with Inn and Ruins, from October 1658, in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (inv. no. 901).3Q. Buvelot and C. Vermeeren, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis: A Summary Catalogue, coll. cat. The Hague 2004, pp. 332-33. He collaborated on several works with other artists, including Nicolaes Berchem (1621-1683) for the Calling of St Matthew, also in the Mauritshuis (inv. no. 1058).4E. Runia and Q. Buvelot, Mauritshuis, Koninklijk Kabinet der Schilderijen. Hoogtepunten uit de collective, coll. cat. The Hague 2014, pp. 120-21. Weenix’s pupils were his son Jan and nephew Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1635-1695).
E. de Groot
References
C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet vande edele vry schilder-const, Antwerp 1661, p. 277; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, II (1719), pp. 77-83, 111, 113, 131, III (1721), pp. 70, 72; A. Bredius, ‘Een testament van Jan Baptist Weenicx’, Oud Holland 45 (1928), no. 1, pp. 177-78; W. Stechow, ‘Jan Baptist Weenix’, The Art Quarterly 11 (1948), pp. 181-98; R.J. Ginnings, The Art of Jan Baptist and Jan Weenix, Newark (DE) 1970 (PhD diss., University of Delaware); C. Schloss, ‘A Note on Jan Baptist Weenix's Patronage in Rome’, Essays in Northern European Art Presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann on his 60th Birthday, CITY 1983, pp. 237-38; A.C. Steland, ‘Jan Baptist Weenix in Rom, 1643-1647: Zur Datierung des zeichnerischen Frühwerks anhand von Signaturveränderungen’, Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 33 (1994), pp. 87-112; J.A. Spicer et al., Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age, exh. cat. San Francisco (Fine Arts Museums)/Baltimore (Walters Art Gallery)/London (National Gallery) 1997-98, pp. 390-91 (text by M.J. Bok); A.C. Steland, ‘Drawings by Dutch Italianate Painters’, in L.B. Harwood (ed.), Inspired by Italy: Dutch Landscape Painting, 1600-1700, exh. cat. London (Dulwich Picture Gallery) 2002, pp. 42-63; 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. 215; A.A. van Wagenberg-Ter Hoeven, Jan Baptist en Jan Weenix: The Paintings, 2 vols., Zwolle 2018; RKD Artists https://rkd.nl/artists/83250
Entry
In the present sheet, a man – apparently a soldier, judging by what seems to be his armoured cuirass – is playing knucklebones or jacks (‘koten’). In that game of ancient origin, knuckels (astralagi) from the ankle of pigs, sheep or cows were either thrown into a ring in the attempt to kick out those of the other players or thrown and caught with the back of the hand in a series of prescribed throws. It is not fully clear which version of the game the figure here is playing. His gaze, shaded from the sun by a wide-brimmed hat, is focused on a stone plinth obviously used as playing field. In the left hand, he is apparently holding a knuckle ready to be thrown, while the item in his right hand appears to be the bowl of his white clay pipe. In an alternative detail, rendered with thin chalk lines, his left arm is stretched out as in a throw. That gesture was discarded, with the final solution marked by more decisive chalk strokes and accented with white chalk.
Spirited and vigorously done, the drawing must have been done from life, as is also betrayed by pentimenti in the position of the right foot. A similar figure, likewise wearing a cuirass, appears in Weenix’s Italian Harbour Scene (1649) in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (inv. no. [10248](
https://hdl.handle.net/21.12130/collect.62455942-AD5A-4AF6-8340-B2FDABCB2B88){target="_blank"}), on loan from the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, Rijswijk/Amersfoort.5Cf. P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 144 (fig. 2); A.A. van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, Jan Baptist Weenix and Jan Weenix: The Paintings, 2 vols., Zwolle 2018, I, no. 54. That painting served as basis for the present drawing’s attribution, first suggested in 1973 by Peter Schatborn and recently accepted by Anke van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven.6Kindly communicated by email, 19 February 2017.
Weenix apparently drew his figure studies while in Italy, assembling a stock for his painted staffage.7P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 69. Unfortunately, little remains of this presumed repertory of figures drawings. Of the studies on blue paper mentioned as being after the same model,8P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 144. only those in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (inv. no. 56.1 as ‘Gerard ter Borch II’) and the Frits Lugt collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 4883),9P. Schatborn and K.G. Boon, Dutch Genre Drawings of the Seventeenth Century: A Loan Exhibition from Dutch Museums, Foundations and Private Collections, exh. cat. New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago) 1972-73, no. 108. seem to be by the same hand.
Annemarie Stefes, 2018
Literature
P. Schatborn, Hollandse genre-tekeningen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1973, p. 38, under no. 108 (as by Weenix); P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 69, no. 99; P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 14-15, fig. 7; P. Schatborn and L. van Sloten, Old Drawings, New Names: Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis) 2014, p. 141 (n. 5)
Citation
A. Stefes, 2018, 'Jan Baptist Weenix, Study of a Man Playing Knucklebones, Rome, c. 1642 - c. 1647', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200145592
(accessed 12 juli 2026 13:05:40 UTC+0).Footnotes
- 1Copy RMA.
- 2W. Stechow, ‘Jan Baptist Weenix’, The Art Quarterly 11 (1948), Stechow 1948, p. 184.
- 3Q. Buvelot and C. Vermeeren, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis: A Summary Catalogue, coll. cat. The Hague 2004, pp. 332-33.
- 4E. Runia and Q. Buvelot, Mauritshuis, Koninklijk Kabinet der Schilderijen. Hoogtepunten uit de collective, coll. cat. The Hague 2014, pp. 120-21.
- 5Cf. P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 144 (fig. 2); A.A. van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, Jan Baptist Weenix and Jan Weenix: The Paintings, 2 vols., Zwolle 2018, I, no. 54.
- 6Kindly communicated by email, 19 February 2017.
- 7P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 69.
- 8P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 1981-82, p. 144.
- 9P. Schatborn and K.G. Boon, Dutch Genre Drawings of the Seventeenth Century: A Loan Exhibition from Dutch Museums, Foundations and Private Collections, exh. cat. New York (Pierpont Morgan Library)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago) 1972-73, no. 108.