BG 18
JACOB DUCK
c.1600 - Utrecht - 1667
The contract: a lady presenting a document to a gentleman and an old lady studying another document
Signed and dated centre, on the letter: 1635 /.J Duck f
Panel: 19 ½ x 16 ¼ in / 49.5 x 41.3 cm
Frame size: 26 x 23 in / 66 x 58.4 cm
Provenance:
Sir Jacob Astley (1797-1859) of Melton Constable Hall, Norfolk;
by descent
Exhibited:
Norwich, Castle Museum, Dutch Paintings from East Anglia, 20th July-29th August 1966, no.14
Norwich, Castle Museum, Dutch and Flemish Paintings in Norfolk: a History of Taste and Influence, Fashion and Collecting, 10th September-20th November 1988, no.110
A seated lady in an elegant maroon silk gown, scalloped lace collar and pearls shows a written document or letter to a standing gentleman with slashed jacket, lace collar, plumed and broad brimmed hat, sword, and fashionably decorated footwear. At the back between the two figures, an old woman with a headdress and spectacles reads another paper. At the left is a covered table with an open jewel box and on the back wall a horizontal painting of Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac.
Jacob Duck made a specialty of small scale genre scenes, often of guardrooms or bordellos, painted in a relatively polished manner. Notwithstanding the fact that several of his family members became priests, his subject matter concentrated primarily on mercenary soldiers, raucous merry companies and venal love scenes. He was trained as a goldsmith and was described as a portraitist, although no works of this kind by his hand have been identified, and became a pupil in Utrecht of the painter of village scenes with peasants, Cornelis Droochsloot (After 1585-1666). However, the genre scenes for which he is best remembered were clearly influenced by those of the Amsterdam guardroom painters, Pieter Codde (1599-1678) and Willem Duyster (1588/89-1635). Codde’s earliest dated painting, the Dancing Lesson of 1627 (Musée du Louvre, Paris), even appears as a painting-within-the-painting in Duck’s Merry company in the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Nîmes (see Nanette Salomon, Jacob Duck and the Gentrification of Dutch Genre Painting, Doornspijk 1998, cat. 59, fig. 101). The present work also owes a debt to earlier paintings by Codde and Duyster of letter themes, of which they were pioneers; see as examples Codde’s paintings of a Woman with a letter in a private collection, Boston, and in the Rau Foundation, Geneva, and Willem Duyster’s Woman with a letter and a man in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (see, respectively, exh. cat. Greenwich, Connecticut, Bruce Museum, and Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, Love Letters. Dutch Genre Paintings in the Age of Vermeer, 2003-2004, p.86, cat. 3, fig. 1, and pp.88-89, cat. 4). In the latter work the woman also seems to have taken the letters from a safekeeping place in jewel box on the table. The 1620s witnessed the first appearance in Dutch art of letter themes – their writing, reading, dictation, dispatch and delivery – at a moment when epistolary activity was exploding in the relatively wealthy and literate United Netherlands (see exh. Greenwich/ Dublin 2003-2004). In the present painting, however, it is not clear that the pieces of paper held by the two women are letters; indeed the painting has been titled The contract. The old lady in the wrapped headdress resembles procuress types in Duck’s bordello scenes (see Salomon 1998, fig. 72) and also appears with a young woman in several of Duck’s Vanitas images (see Salomon 1998, figs. 91 & 92). However, Duck also executed a few paintings of what have been interpreted as exemplary subjects, such as Almsgiving in a notary’s office (Private collection, New York; Salomon 1998, cat. 48, pl. II). The Biblical painting on the back wall may have a bearing on the elusive narrative. It depicts the climactic moment when Abraham, believing that it is God’s will that he sacrifice his own son, has his hand stayed by an angel, saying ‘Now I know that you are a God-fearing man, you have not withheld from me your son’ (Genesis 22: 1-19). Since the Middle Ages the subject had figured as a typological parallel linking the Old and New Testaments, connecting Abraham’s sacrifice to God’s sacrifice of Christ. It embodied the ultimate act of faith, thus could underscore the trust committed by the written words appearing on the paper that the woman presents so pointedly to the man. Unfortunately the words are illegible, which only adds to the intrigue of the painting’s subject.
The painting evidently was not known to Salomon when she catalogued Duck’s oeuvre in 1998. However, it is an entirely characteristic work and an important example from the master’s early career. Dated works by the artist are very rare, but we have dated examples from 1628 to 1655 (Salomon 1998, figs 1 & 2). The present work, signed and dated 1635, therefore is a welcome addition to his oeuvre and helps to establish his chronological development. Generally Duck’s art progressed from the multi-figured early genre themes of Codde, Duyster and Simon Kick, to more elegant scenes with fewer figures, as painted by artists like Gerard Terborch, Nicolaes Maes, Jacob van Loo and Gerbrand van den Eeckhout. Thus he represents a transitional figure in the tradition of guardroom painters. The present work is an early experiment with a more intimate group and may be compared to the other dated work of 1635, the more characteristically populous Merry company with eight figures in an interior, formerly with Salomon Lilian, Amsterdam (Salomon 1998, cat. 58, fig. 99), in which the costumes are very similar.
On the back of the painting is an old inscription: ‘the Master is Leduc’; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jacob Duck was frequently confused with the Dutch animal painter, Jan le Ducq (1629/30-1676).
Peter C. Sutton.
JACOB DUCK
c.1600 - Utrecht - 1667
Jacob Duck was a Dutch painter of genre pieces who specialised in guardroom scenes and merry companies, continuing the tradition popularised by the Amsterdam painters Willem Duyster (1598/9-1635) and Pieter Codde (1599-1678) and the Delft painter Anthonie Palamedesz. (1601-1673). He also painted tavern interiors and domestic subjects.
During his early years, Duck painted multi-figured genre scenes, often in an almost monochromatic palette. Gradually, these gave way to more elegant interiors with fewer, more carefully placed figures distinguished by their costly garments and executed in strong local colours. Many of Duck’s subjects depict gambling, card playing, drinking, smoking and prostitution and were of moral significance, seen as a warning against temptation and the dangers of excess.
Duck was born circa 1600 into a Catholic family in Utrecht; his brothers Johan and Cornelis became priests. His mother was a linen merchant and his family had artistic connections: Duck’s parents witnessed the will of the celebrated Utrecht painter Abraham Bloemaert. Jacob Duck was apprenticed to a goldsmith in 1611, but by 1621 (the year after he married Rijckgen Crook) he was among the pupils of the Utrecht painter Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot (1586-1666), known primarily for his low-life subjects and street scenes.
In 1621, Duck was recorded in the Utrecht Guild of St. Luke as a conterfeyt jongen (apprentice portraitist); by 1630, he was a Master of the Guild. He became a member of the Haarlem Guild in 1636, though he continued to live in Utrecht. By 1660 Duck was living in The Hague, but returned to Utrecht in 1661, where he died in 1667. His six daughters declined his inheritance, which suggests that he died with more debts than assets.
The work of Jacob Duck is represented in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts and the J Paul Getty Museum, California.