The Alchemist

Support The single, vertically grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 0.8-0.5 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled at the top and bottom and on the right, and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1640. The plank could have been ready for use by 1651, but a date in or after 1657 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, smooth, off-white ground extends over the edges of the support. It consists of mostly lead-white with a small addition of earth pigments.
Underdrawing Infrared photography and infrared reflectography revealed an underdrawing in a dry medium, also partly visible to the naked eye in thin, light areas, such as the face of the woman. It consists of sketchy, short, rather thick lines that indicate the composition very roughly, and is extremely cursory and difficult to read. Lines to the left of the standing boy show that he was initially planned closer to the table. Infrared reflectography also revealed three thin construction lines to aid a correct perspective on the left, in the window and wall.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light. The background consists of only one or two layers of thin, rather transparent paint leaving reserves for the compositional elements, but not for the smaller ones such as the festoons at the ceiling. The figures and other elements were undermodelled, introducing dark and light areas, with rather opaque, smooth paints in subdued brown, yellow, grey and white, applied wet in wet. Small, brightly coloured, somewhat oily, impasted brushstrokes and dabs of paints were applied to finalize the modelling and indicate highlights, and short black lines were added to enhance the contours and deepen the darkest shadows.
Ige Verslype, 2024

Fair. Small, slightly discoloured retouchings are visible in several places, particularly in the woman. The paint layer is abraded throughout, especially in the thinly applied light brown areas. The varnish has slightly yellowed.

…; sale, Daniel Gerard van der Burgh (1755-1824), Kronenburg Castle, Loenen, sold on the premises (J. Sanderson), 6 September 1824, no. 4 (‘Een alchimist en zijn huisgezin, zittende in zijne werkplaats bij het venster, sprekende met een hem vragend jongeling, het vertrek rijk gestoffeerd met veel toepasselijk bijwerk’), fl. 385, to Johannes Rombouts (1772-1850), Dordrecht;¹¹[P.L. Dubourcq], Beschrijving der schilderijen op ’s Rijks Museum te Amsterdam met fac simile der naamteekens, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1870, p. 252, no. LV. his nephew, Leendert Dupper Willemsz (1799-1870), Dordrecht, 1850; by whom bequeathed to the museum, with 63 other paintings, 12 April 1870²²NHA, ARM, IS, inv. 30, nos. 123 (8 March 1870), 132 (25 April 1870); NHA, ARM, Kop., inv. 39, pp. 62-63 (11 May 1870).

ObjectNumber: SK-A-489

Credit line: Dupper Wzn. Bequest, Dordrecht

An alchemist in his laboratory was a popular subject in seventeenth-century painting. The long visual tradition shows how people viewed science and alchemy in a particular period.⁷⁷On this subject see J. van Lennep, ‘L’Alchimiste: Origine et développement d’un thème de la peinture du dix-septième siècle’, Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art 35 (1966), pp. 149-68; V. Manuth, J. Harrold and D. Beaufort, ‘Alchemy in Dutch Art of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: “Van de Consten der Alchimie”’, in V. Manuth et al., Wisdom, Knowledge & Magic: The Image of the Scholar in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art, exh. cat. Kingston (Agnes Etherington Art Centre) 1996-97, pp. 19-26. In sixteenth-century literature and art, human folly was symbolized by an alchemist doggedly trying to turn base metals into gold, beggaring his family in the process. One of the best-known examples is Philips Galle’s engraving after a drawing of 1558 by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.⁸⁸Illustrated in F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, III, Amsterdam 1950, p. 296, no. 197. The print made a major contribution to the popularity of the genre. In the seventeenth century, developments in cartography, optics and astronomy raised the standing of science, and as a result people became more lenient towards pseudo-sciences such as alchemy – the lines dividing the disciplines being difficult to draw anyway. The increasing tolerance was reflected in depictions of alchemists’ laboratories.⁹⁹C. Brown, ‘...Niet ledighs of ydels...’: Nederlandse genreschilders uit de 17e eeuw, Amsterdam 1984, p. 100.

Thomas Wijck portrayed his alchemist as a respectable scholar wearing a cap and fur-trimmed coat. Although the distilling apparatus that the artist so often included is missing here, the stuffed crocodile hanging on a cord from the ceiling to the right of the window and the strings of herbs speak volumes about what goes on in this laboratory. The mood is peaceful and domestic. The alchemist is talking to a boy, while a woman is doing household chores by the hearth in the background as she instructs a kneeling boy how to stoke the fire.

Alchemists’ laboratories and philosophers’ studies form far and away the bulk of Wijck’s genre pieces. There are dozens of them, and they display great variety and ingenuity in their compositions. Houbraken considered them typical of the artist’s oeuvre.¹⁰¹⁰A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, p. 16. According to Horace Walpole, George Vertue esteemed the laboratories as Wijck’s best work.¹¹¹¹H. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England: With Some Account of the Principal Artists, and Incidental Notes on Other Arts: Collected by the Late Mr. George Vertue, II, Strawberry-Hill 1762, p. 234.

As far as the rendering of the actual interiors is concerned, Wijck was initially indebted to those of his presumed teacher, Adriaen van Ostade. That applies to every kind of space that Wijck painted. After his supposed sojourn in Italy, probably at some stage between 1644 and 1653, he incorporated his earlier fascination with southern courtyards imaginatively in his laboratories. We almost invariably look through an archway into an interior in which countless objects are strewn about. Apparently, the number of items, and in particular the highlighted bundles of paper, grew as time passed. However, it is difficult to arrive at a precise chronological order, because Wijck almost never dated his paintings. For example, the composition of an alchemist’s laboratory in Mainz is still fairly simple,¹²¹²Landesmuseum Mainz; illustrated in C. Stukenbrock, Niederländische Gemälde des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, coll. cat. Mainz (Landesmuseum) 1997, p. 513. and does not contain as much paraphernalia as the one in the Rijksmuseum. The latter is more closely related to the laboratories in The Hague, Braunschweig, Kassel, Karlsruhe and Darmstadt, with its heaps of objects and impasted brushstrokes, and probably comes from the same period as them.¹³¹³Illustrated respectively in Q. Buvelot (ed.), Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis: A Summary Catalogue, coll. cat. The Hague 2004, p. 337; R. Klessmann, Die holländischen Gemälde: Kritisches Verzeichnis mit 485 Abbildungen, coll. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1983, p. 231; B. Schnackenburg, Gesamtkatalog Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Kassel, coll. cat. Kassel 1996, II, pls. 140, 141 (3 works); J. Lauts, Katalog alte Meister bis 1800: Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, coll. cat. Karlsruhe 1966, II, p. 436. For the Darmstadt painting, see photo RKD. All of these pictures are in Wijck’s more mature manner. Dendrochronology indicated that the Amsterdam panel was most likely painted in or after 1657.¹⁴¹⁴See Technical notes. Given its late style, which is related to that of Peasant Woman Spinning,¹⁵¹⁵SK-A-488. a date in the 1660s seems eminently plausible.

The museum acquired The Alchemist as part of the Leendert Dupper Bequest. There is a watercolour after it in the Dordrechts Museum that the collector and amateur artist made himself in 1842, when the painting still belonged to his nephew Johannes Rombouts.¹⁶¹⁶See Provenance. The watercolour (317 x 275 mm) is rather smaller than the painting (43.6 x 38 cm); see L.J. Bol (intro.), Catalogus van de kersttentoonsstelling in Dordrechts Museum: 17de eeuwse meesters uit de collectie Leendert Dupper wz (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) en Scheffer intime, exh. cat. Dordrecht 1949-50, p. 15, no. 55 (not ill.).

Richard Harmanni, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

C. Brown, ‘...Niet ledighs of ydels...’: Nederlandse genreschilders uit de 17e eeuw, Amsterdam 1984, pp. 71, 100

1870, p. 252, no. LX; 1880, p. 356, no. 418; 1976, p. 616, no. A 489

Richard Harmanni, 2024, 'Thomas Wijck, The Alchemist, c. 1660 - c. 1670', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6558