Object data
oil on panel
support: height 48.7 cm × width 40.2 cm
Gerard Houckgeest
Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft, with a Trompe-l’Oeil Curtain
1654
Inscriptions
- signature and date, bottom centre: GH•i654
Technical notes
Support The single, vertically grained oak plank is approx. 0.8 cm thick. The left and right edges have been trimmed slightly. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1642. The panel could have been ready for use by 1651, but a date in or after 1661 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, smooth beige ground extends over the edges of the support at the top and bottom, but not over the left and right edges. It consists of large white and some minute red and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing An underdrawing in a dry medium is partly visible with the naked eye. Infrared reflectography revealed that it defines the architectural elements, but not the perspective lines.
Paint layers Three marks made in the fresh ground and paint layers were used as an aid for the perspective. In the man’s hat in the far left an obvious indentation indicates the left vanishing point, to which most of the perspective lines of the architecture and floor lead. Another obvious dent is visible in the prominent white column in the middle, exactly halfway up the composition. A line matching the horizon line was scratched in the wet paint above the head of the woman on the right, perhaps enabling the artist to recover the horizon line after he had lost his marker. The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was laid out in grey tones before colours were added. All elements were placed neatly next to each other, sometimes leaving the underdrawing exposed. One obvious change to the design was made in the top of the white column in the middle, which was planned wider originally.
Michel van de Laar, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- paint samples: M. van der Laar, RMA, no. SK-A-1584/1, 29 January 2009
- technical report: M. van der Laar, RMA, 29 January 2009
- infrared reflectography: M. van der Laar, RMA, 4 February 2009
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 21 December 2009
Condition
Good. The panel is slightly warped. Numerous small details, such as the grooves in the wood of the choir railings, the signature and date, and many subtle shadows executed in a dark brown paint display alligator cracking.
Conservation
- M. van de Laar, 1999: complete restoration
Provenance
…; ? sale, Jonkheer Johan Goll van Franckenstein Jr (1756-1821, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Vries et al.), 1 July 1833 sqq., no. 34 (‘hoog 4 p. 8 d. breed 4 p. 1 d. [48 x 41 cm] Eene Protestantsche Kerk, van binnen te zien, ter zijde eene kapel met afgesloten hekwerk en beschilderde glazen’), fl. 210, to Engelberts;1…; collection W.P. van Lennep, Amsterdam, 1867;2 by descent to J.F. van Lennep, Amsterdam 1890;3 by descent to Margaretha Catharina Messchert van Vollenhoven, née Van Lennep (1815-1891), Amsterdam; her sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 29 March 1892, no. 4, fl. 7,500, to the Vereniging Rembrandt; from which, fl. 8,000, to the museum, June 1892
Object number: SK-A-1584
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Gerard Houckgeest (? The Hague c. 1600 - Bergen op Zoom 1661)
Gerard Houckgeest, whose name only surfaced for the first time in nineteenth-century reference books, was probably born in The Hague, as the son of a cloth merchant. His date of birth is always given as around 1600 in the recent literature, but that is no more than a rough estimate based on the assumption that he would have been about 25 years old when he registered with the Hague Guild of St Luke in 1625. In the nineteenth century he was confused with his uncle, the portraitist Joachim Houckgeest. The name of his teacher is not known, but his stylistic development points towards the Hague architectural painter Bartholomeus van Bassen. His earliest known dated picture, Banquet with Charles I and Henrietta Maria of 1635,4 is a copy after Van Bassen in which only the figures were altered, and his only etching is of a church interior after the same artist.
Houckgeest is recorded as a resident of The Hague in 1633 but he must have left for Delft soon afterwards, for he drew up a prenuptial contract there with Helena van Cromstrijen on 17 March 1635. Although he was still living in Delft and had himself registered as a master painter in that city in 1639, he rejoined the Hague guild that same year. His enrolment may have had something to do with a commission he received in 1640 to draw the cartoons for a tapestry series for the debating chamber of the States-General. A trip to England is suspected on the evidence of an entry in the inventory of Charles I of ‘a Prospective peece painted by Hookgest and the Queenes picture therein at length don by Cornelius Johnson’, and the early sale of four works by Houckgeest from the king’s collection suggests that he was in touch with the English royal house, but there is no firm evidence of a foreign visit.
Houckgeest is registered several times in Delft in the first half of the 1640s, and it seems from the name of his home, Brouwery de Clauw (The Claw Brewery), that he may have run a brewery there. He sold the place in Delft in 1649, and on 27 May 1651 he is recorded as a resident of Steenbergen in the southern province of North Brabant. From 1653 he settled in Bergen op Zoom, where he owned houses and land. He signed a document in The Hague on 15 May 1654. Inheritances, above all from his wife’s family, left him well-off at the end of his life. He died in Bergen op Zoom in August 1661.
Houckgeest, who specialized in painting architecture, left a small oeuvre. At first he depicted imaginary buildings, but from 1650 he portrayed real churches. His last dated paintings are two views of the Sint-Gertrudiskerk in Bergen op Zoom from 16555 and 1656.6
Gerdien Wuestman, 2022
References
R. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, I, Haarlem 1816, pp. 66-67; J. Immerzeel Jr, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van het begin der vijftiende eeuw tot heden, II, Amsterdam 1843, p. 43; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, II, Amsterdam 1858, p. 699; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], I, Rotterdam 1877-78, pp. 6, 33, 45; Bredius in F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], IV, Rotterdam 1881-82, p. 8; A. Bredius, ‘De Haagsche schilders Joachim en Gerard Houckgeest’, Oud Holland 6 (1888), pp. 81-86; Wichman in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XVII, Leipzig 1924, pp. 557-58; H. Gerson, Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Haarlem 1942, p. 394; O. Millar (ed.), ‘Abraham van der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collections of Charles I’, The Walpole Society 37 (1958-60), pp. 1-256, esp. p. 158; O. Millar, ‘The Inventories and Valuations of the King’s Goods, 1649-1651’, The Walpole Society 43 (1970-72), pp. 1-458, esp. pp. 188, 191, 277, 300; L. de Vries, ‘Gerard Houckgeest’, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 20 (1975), pp. 25-56; W. Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte, Doornspijk 1982, pp. 29-31; Giltaij in J. Giltaij and G. Jansen (eds.), Perspectiven: Saenredam en de architectuurschilders van de 17e eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1991, p. 163; Schavemaker in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXXV, Munich/Leipzig 2012, p. 83; A. Pollmer-Schmidt, Kirchenbilder: Der Kirchenraum in der holländischen Malerei um 1650, Kromsdorf 2017; Bredius notes, RKD
Entry
This Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft is typical of Gerard Houckgeest’s work and is a landmark in his oeuvre.7 It is a view to the north-east showing the pulpit half-hidden by the central column.8 The picture is in a cool bright palette. The subtly coloured patches on the column created by the sun streaming in through the stained-glass windows are typical of Houckgeest’s preoccupation with lighting effects. A young woman and a man seen from the back are conversing in the foreground. The composition is framed within an arch and a trompe-l’oeil curtain.
This painting is also important for an understanding of Houckgeest’s working method. In 1986 Liedtke associated it with another interior of the Oude Kerk by the artist in an English private collection (fig. a).9 It turned out that the present composition exactly matches the left half of that picture, which may not have been so readily apparent because of the addition of the baptistry screen in the foreground and the framing elements around the Rijksmuseum work. Liedtke has made a persuasive case that both are based on the same drawing, which also explains why the three-point perspective in the Rijksmuseum painting is eccentric, with the left-hand vanishing point near the left edge, the central one beyond the right side and the right-hand one far beyond the right edge.10 In addition to a preliminary study, the artist must have used a nail to help him draw his orthogonals, for there is a hole marking the vanishing point in the hat of the man on the left.11 There are two other church interiors by Houckgeest with compositions derived from a larger whole,12 but there he zoomed in on the central subject, whereas here he divided the scene in two.
The date of this painting is open to discussion. The year, and the last digit in particular, is difficult to read. Most authors take it to be a four,13 and it was also interpreted as ‘1654’ in the most recent technical examination. Liedtke believed that there could be either ‘1’ or ‘4’ at the end, and employs stylistic and other grounds to back his view that the work was probably made in Houckgeest’s Delft period, that is to say 1651.14 However sound these arguments may be, the inscription leaves little leeway for reading the year as ‘1651’, and since the composition is based on a earlier study a slightly later date is certainly not implausible.
The tenacity with which the debate about the date is being conducted is partly due to the existence of a painting by Emanuel de Witte in Ottawa which can be placed around 1651, and has a similar composition, as well as a trompe l’oeil in the form of a green velvet curtain on the right.15 Assigning the Rijksmuseum picture to 1654 could modify the prevailing opinion that it was generally Houckgeest who played a leading role. Manke and Wheelock, who both accepted the date of 1654, believed that in this event Houckgeest was influenced by his much younger colleague,16 while Liedtke felt that the opposite is more likely to be the case, assuming that the two works were indeed made in concert.17 It seems fairly certain that De Witte’s painting preceded the one in the Rijksmuseum, but that does not necessarily mean that Houckgeest imitated him.18
The tromp-l’oeil green curtain is an allusion to seventeenth-century painting practice.19 This ploy was used by many artists around the middle of the century for pictures in the most varied genres.20 Houckgeest heightened the illusionistic effect by having the curtain rod cast a shadow on the wooden framing element and the church’s column and vaulting. The inclusion of the frame and the rod with the curtain turns works of this kind into ‘painted paintings’, but by applying the trick to a church interior Houckgeest also creates the idea of a glimpse through a window.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
H. Jantzen, Das niederländische Architekturbild, Leipzig 1910, p. 162, no. 172; L. de Vries, ‘Gerard Houckgeest’, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 20 (1975), pp. 25-56, esp. pp. 44-45, 52, no. 21; W. Liedtke, Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte, Doornspijk 1982, pp. 44-46, 100, no. 4; Liedtke in W. Liedtke et al., Vermeer and the Delft School, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)/London (The National Gallery) 2001, pp. 303-05, no. 40, with earlier literature; A. Pollmer-Schmidt, Kirchenbilder: Der Kirchenraum in der holländischen Malerei um 1650, Kromsdorf 2017, pp. 154-56, 263, 455
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 136, no. 1260; 1934, p. 137, no. 1260; 1960, pp. 146-47, no. 1260; 1976, p. 291, no. A 1584
Citation
Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'Gerard Houckgeest, Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft, with a Trompe-l’Oeil Curtain, 1654', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8779
(accessed 24 May 2024 20:07:59).