The Lily and the Guild Master
With a number of examples we have been able to show how a spectacular restoration can eventually result in a correct interpretation. But it is certainly not always necessary for something about the painting to change. Art history itself can produce to surprising new insights. By examining a painting in detail and placing it in its historical context, it can acquire a totally different dimension. This is what happened to two paintings of domestic interiors by the eighteenth-century artist Adriaen de Lelie.
The Livingroom Scene and Kitchen Scene pendants by Adriaen de Lelie are among the finest paintings of interiors of the late eighteenth century. Not only are they magnificently painted and is the palette of a rare harmony, they also
offer the viewer an insight into the everyday world or the people portrayed. But that is not all: these paintings also testify to a world of ideas, even though this is not immediately obvious. On closer inspection, there is in fact a world of
difference.
Silver Age
The scenes depicted by Adriaen de Lelie exude the atmosphere of the so-called Silver Age. We see people dressed in clothes fashionable in the 1780s and ’90s, engaged in household activities in contemporary interiors, surrounded by contemporary objects.
Yet the compositional schemes are taken from those of seventeenth-century interiors. As in works by Pieter de Hooch and other masters of the Delft school, De Lelie offers a view into the courtyard or the entrance hall of a house with a dark object placed
in the foreground as a repoussoir.
Not only had little changed in the compositional schemes of genre paintings over the years, the perception of subjects was also rooted in the seventeenth century. The prototypes created by the Golden Age were gratefully adopted by their Silver Age
successors. Thus the whitewashed wall of the livingroom is immediately reminiscent of Johannes Vermeer’s Maidservant Pouring Milk while the dog looks as if it has just walked out of a painting by Jan Steen or Jan Miense Molenaer. But while the
structure of De Lelie’s works may appear at first to be seventeenth-century, the world in which they are set is entirely contemporary, so much so that we can justifiably call it a world of difference.
Pastel tints
De Lelie employed a wonderful painting technique. Both of these works are among the finest to have been painted at this time. Moreover, they have remained in excellent condition. De Lelie achieved a magnificent result with his delicate yet painterly
brushwork. Hard and soft materials are juxtaposed with superb contrasts. The woolliness of the blanket that the woman uses as a base for ironing is almost tangible. The cold steel of the fire tong, the glistening metal of the spectacle box, the solid
stoneware of the jug and the starched linen of the lately ironed collar are contrasted in the same delightful way.
In the Kitchen Scene it is the various vegetables and kitchen utensils that catch the eye. The copper skimmer, the pan and the kettle on the burner and the vegetable bucket - all have been captured magnificently in paint. The sublime rendering
of the dresses shows that De Lelie’s prodigious reputation in his own day had been well earned.
Though rich in detail, the depiction nevertheless exudes a sense of harmony. This is achieved not just by the positioning of the objects, but also by the soft colours that are so gentle to the eye. Splendid pastel shades like these are only ever found in
eighteenth-century art. Indeed, these paintings represent an elegant bridge between the Baroque of the seventeenth century and the sweet Romanticism of later years.
The two works are unmistakably linked by their subject matter. And it is nice to see how certain details provide a subtle emphasis of this. The maidservant in the Livingroom Scene has just finished ironing a white collar like the one worn by the
child in the Kitchen Scene, while through the kitchen window we see an old woman in the courtyard who might easily have sat in a corner of the room beside the maid.
Everyday life
The daily routine of life first became a subject in art in the sixteenth century. Early domestic and kitchen scenes were almost invariably settings for a biblical narrative, like that of the Prodigal Son or Christ at the home of Martha and
Mary. It was only under the influence of the humanist ideas of the Renaissance that the religious context disappeared and everyday life became a theme in its own right. This does not mean that later domestic interiors were vacuous and devoid of
content. On the contrary, genre paintings were frequently designed to convey a specific moral message.
While for seventeenth-century viewers this message was often directly obvious, over the years the meaning of many of the visual idioms has been lost. Today, after considerable study by art historians, it is possible once again to read between the lines
and bring the deeper meaning intended by the artist to the fore. In the idealised and French-inspired classical style that replaced Dutch realism in the Netherlands in the late seventeenth century there was no room for scenes from everyday life. So genre
painting went out of fashion, until it was rediscovered almost a century later.
Guild and master
Adriaen de Lelie’s pendants Livingroom Scene and Kitchen Scene are among the most significant of this Tilburg artist’s interior paintings. Following an apprenticeship in Antwerp and Düsseldorf, De Lelie moved to Amsterdam in around 1784.
There he made his name as a portraitist. Prompted by a wealthy merchant and collector, Jan Gildemeester Jansz. (1744-1799) of Amsterdam, De Lelie began producing genre paintings. Gildemeester selected two of these for himself. He acquired the
Livingroom Scene and Kitchen Scene pendants as soon as De Lelie had finished them.
Gildemeester had the largest and most famous Dutch art collection of the time. It contained over 300 paintings, more than 2,000 drawings and almost 1,000 prints by Old Masters and contemporary artists. In addition to paintings by Steen, Wouwerman,
Teniers, Ter Borch and other seventeenth-century masters, he also included contemporary paintings by famous artists such as La Fargue, Van Drielst, Laquy and De Lelie in his collection. Gildemeester gathered all these works of art in his house, first on
Keizersgracht and from 1792 at Herengracht 475.
On 11 June 1800, a year after Gildemeester’s death, his paintings and drawings were sold at auction in Amsterdam. The sale catalogue lists the genre scenes by De Lelie discussed here under numbers 118 and 119 as ‘A Burgher Interior’ and ‘A Dutch
Kitchen’.
Staring
In the twentieth century the two paintings were acquired by A. Staring (1890-1980) for his art collection at his home, De Wildenborch, in Vorden. Originally a lawyer, in 1919 Staring had decided to leave the diplomatic service and devote his life to the
study of Dutch art. His preference was art of the eighteenth century and with his research, which resulted in numerous publications and exhibitions, Staring broke new ground for this period. After his death and that of his wife, the collection of
paintings and drawings was dispersed. The two De Lelie genre pictures were also sold. Fortunately, the pendants were kept together down the years. No one has yet found it in their heart to separate them.
Senior model
The description of these paintings in the catalogue of the Gildemeester auction of 1800 states that the ‘different ages or stations in life depicted in the two paintings reveal the ingenious way this talented master thought about such subjects’. The Dutch
word levensstand in the description, can be interpreted in more than one way. Firstly as signifying the different phases of life. And indeed, the two paintings show people of different ages, young to old. An interesting detail in this connection
is that De Lelie employed an extremely elderly woman as a model for the lady in the kitchen scene. She was Lijsje Pieter Ruiter, known as Widow Heynemans, who died in 1804 at the remarkable age of 107. She regularly sat for De Lelie and appears in several
of his genre paintings. One portrait drawing of Lijsje that De Lelie drew includes the following verse as a caption:
See here Mrs Heynemans drawn from life,
Who at the grand old age of a hundred and seven,
Is as bright, healthy and fresh, going here and there,
Even going twice a year on foot to Kevelaar!
Rank and status
The Dutch word levensstand can also refer to social status. However, the class distinction between the different figures in De Lelie’s two depictions is not immediately obvious and requires explanation. In the Livingroom Scene we see an
old man who has entered the servant’s quarters after having walked the dog. He is dressed in a brown coat of a type known as a redingote (derived from the word ‘riding coat’) and is sitting on a typical eighteenth-century chair. His walkingstick
with its expensive handle lies beside him on the floor. The fact that he is still wearing his hat indicates that his status is higher than that of the two women. Among equals this would have been quite impolite. On closer examination, the common, less
than elegant clothes worn by the woman doing the ironing reveals her to be a servant. The barely discernable old lady with the white cap on the left in the background also belonged to the staff. The man - the head of the household, or perhaps a steward -
treats them with a certain familiarity; he is reading to them from the newspaper.
In the Kitchen Scene the class distinctions between the four figures are equally obscure at first sight. Yet they too belong to different ranks of society. From their simple clothes and their domestic chores, the women in the foreground are
clearly part of the staff. Unlike the young boy, who is wearing a fashionable brown buttoned suit with a white collar and breeches. The older boy is also dressed fashionably in a kind of sailor suit. This comfortable children’s style was introduced in the
Netherlands around 1780 from Britain and was to remain popular for many years. Clearly, the boys are the children of the house. The pretty maid with the vegetables is the focus of the composition. All the other figures are linked in some way to her. She
gives the youngster warmth and comfort, the older boy tries to tease her while the other woman helps her with her work.
One big family
The cosy atmosphere that envelops the household and its servants presents them all as belonging to one big family. It is an idea that stems from the revolutionary age of the close of the eighteenth century, an age that heralded the motto ‘Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity’. This meeting of the world of upstairs and downstairs places these paintings in an age when egalitarianism had become an ideology. Whether the wealthy Gildemeester and the celebrated De Lelie were as familiar with their own staff
is open to question. Either way, their collaboration resulted in a splendid visual depiction of this ideal.
Adriaen de Lelie came from Tilburg. Following his apprenticeship at Antwerp and Düsseldorf he moved to Amsterdam in around 1784, on the advice of the scholarly Petrus Camper. Here he soon made a name as a portraitist. He later turned to genre painting too. De Lelie’s paintings have a certain modern and contemporary character, with the bright light that illuminates his scenes and his colourful, yet supremely balanced palette. His figures are also always dressed in the latest fashion. De Lelie was one of the most popular artists of his day, as indicated by his inclusion in the collection of the prominent contemporary collector Jan Gildemeester.