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Lot Essay
Jacob Duck is first recorded professionally as a goldsmith’s apprentice in 1611, and he was later registered as a master in the goldsmith’s guild. No works by him in this medium have come down to us today, nor do his many koretgaadjes (guardroom) scenes contain any particular focus on armor or metalwork (N. Salomon, loc. cit., pp. 16-17). In 1621 he was apprenticed to Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot and in the same year was registered to the Utrecht painter’s guild as conterfyt jongen (apprentice portraitist), although no portraits by him survive. Few dated works by the artist exist -- the present painting is the last known dated work by Duck and is an example of his mature style. The figure in the foreground is spotlit and set in stark relief against a neutral background, providing the only hint of colour and contrast in the picture. The muted effect echoes the overall tranquility of the scene -- even the dog in the immediate foreground is calm, undisturbed as it gnaws on a bone.
The guardroom emerged as a popular theme in the seventeenth century, at which point the Eighty Years’ War was in its final stages and a new military class was forming in the Dutch Republic. Duck’s early guardroom scenes reflect the desire of this new group of middle-class military officers who had raised their social standing to distance themselves from the peasantry. Take for example Duck’s earliest dated work, a guardroom from 1628 (fig. 1, present location unknown), in which a well-dressed officer gestures with a stick at a group of enlisted men. One of the soldiers is asleep, another is smoking, while a third stares inquisitively at a piece of armor, and all are in various states of undress; each of these conditions would have been recognized by contemporary viewers as signs of their moral failings. Duck continued to use a high-ranking officer as a moral instructor in his guardroom scenes throughout the 1630s, as evidenced by a guardroom now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (fig. 2). Two senior officers dressed in fine clothing are seen preparing themselves for the front lines in the foreground. In the background soldiers heeding the call to arms can be seen through the open doorway. The middleground is dominated by a group of soldiers, one sloppily dressed and asleep, another attempting to tickle him awake with a piece of wheat, while a third pikeman can be spotted pickpocketing the tickler, humorously recalling the Dutch proverb ‘Die slapen gaat, weet niet hoe hij ontwaken sal’ ('He who goes to sleep, knows not how he will wake up'). A contemporary viewer would have immediately recognized the moral lesson; missing the call to arms would have moved beyond the loss of personal virtue to that of a loss of civic and national pride.
By the time the present painting was executed, in 1655, the Eighty Years’ War had already come to its conclusion following the Peace of Münster in 1648. Duck continued to paint militaria well into peacetime; here Duck uses the well-dressed ensign as his moral narrator, who directs the viewer with a pointing stick deeper into the room, toward a group of soldiers playing cards. Beyond a woman can be seen smoking. While the message of virtue versus vice can be read from right to left across the picture plane, the wartime potency of the lesson is toned down significantly.
The guardroom emerged as a popular theme in the seventeenth century, at which point the Eighty Years’ War was in its final stages and a new military class was forming in the Dutch Republic. Duck’s early guardroom scenes reflect the desire of this new group of middle-class military officers who had raised their social standing to distance themselves from the peasantry. Take for example Duck’s earliest dated work, a guardroom from 1628 (fig. 1, present location unknown), in which a well-dressed officer gestures with a stick at a group of enlisted men. One of the soldiers is asleep, another is smoking, while a third stares inquisitively at a piece of armor, and all are in various states of undress; each of these conditions would have been recognized by contemporary viewers as signs of their moral failings. Duck continued to use a high-ranking officer as a moral instructor in his guardroom scenes throughout the 1630s, as evidenced by a guardroom now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (fig. 2). Two senior officers dressed in fine clothing are seen preparing themselves for the front lines in the foreground. In the background soldiers heeding the call to arms can be seen through the open doorway. The middleground is dominated by a group of soldiers, one sloppily dressed and asleep, another attempting to tickle him awake with a piece of wheat, while a third pikeman can be spotted pickpocketing the tickler, humorously recalling the Dutch proverb ‘Die slapen gaat, weet niet hoe hij ontwaken sal’ ('He who goes to sleep, knows not how he will wake up'). A contemporary viewer would have immediately recognized the moral lesson; missing the call to arms would have moved beyond the loss of personal virtue to that of a loss of civic and national pride.
By the time the present painting was executed, in 1655, the Eighty Years’ War had already come to its conclusion following the Peace of Münster in 1648. Duck continued to paint militaria well into peacetime; here Duck uses the well-dressed ensign as his moral narrator, who directs the viewer with a pointing stick deeper into the room, toward a group of soldiers playing cards. Beyond a woman can be seen smoking. While the message of virtue versus vice can be read from right to left across the picture plane, the wartime potency of the lesson is toned down significantly.