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拍品专文
‘In harmonious coolness, firmly treated chiaroscuro, and truth of detail, this picture rivals Dujardin' (G.F. Waagen, 1854). While Waagen’s comment betrays his nineteenth-century sensibilities, in which the work of Karel Dujardin (1626-1678) was held in particularly high esteem, one might equally argue that the works by Dujardin that Waagen had in mind instead rival those by Asselijn. Indeed, Anne Charlotte Steland-Stief has pointed out that the present painting, which dates to around 1650, anticipates Dujardin’s paintings of the second half of the 1650s by several years and may well have served as inspiration for the younger artist’s paintings (op. cit., p. 91). Typical of Asselijn’s late style, a period in which he was at the peak of his abilities, is the painting’s clear palette with refined, smooth brushwork that evokes the fashionable approach of contemporary artists like Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-1660).
Among Asselijn’s many accomplishments was his ability to imbue his Italianate landscapes with the character of a genre painting. Somewhat curiously, no earlier commentator appears to have remarked upon the present painting’s thinly veiled erotic narrative. In the lower left foreground, Asselijn included two plants – thistle and ivy. In the early modern period, thistle had a reputation as a ‘thirsty’ plant and was seen as an aphrodisiac that could be associated with either male or female sexuality. It was, however, commonly known as Männertreu, which likely explains its proximity to the young man pulling up his sock. Ivy, on the other hand, was viewed as an exclusively feminine symbol in light of its ‘clinging’ character (for further information on the iconography of these two plants, see D.R. Smith, ‘Courtesy and its discontents: Frans Hals’s Portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen’, Oud Holland, C, 1986, p. 6). Moreover, the young woman dangling the bird before the leaping – decidedly male – dog no doubt would have elicited sexual connotations in the minds of contemporary viewers, for the Dutch word vogelen (birding) also means to engage in sex. Taken together, these symbols leave little room to doubt that Asselijn intended to draw an explicit comparison between the dog’s appetite for the bird and the young man’s interest in his female companion.
Among Asselijn’s many accomplishments was his ability to imbue his Italianate landscapes with the character of a genre painting. Somewhat curiously, no earlier commentator appears to have remarked upon the present painting’s thinly veiled erotic narrative. In the lower left foreground, Asselijn included two plants – thistle and ivy. In the early modern period, thistle had a reputation as a ‘thirsty’ plant and was seen as an aphrodisiac that could be associated with either male or female sexuality. It was, however, commonly known as Männertreu, which likely explains its proximity to the young man pulling up his sock. Ivy, on the other hand, was viewed as an exclusively feminine symbol in light of its ‘clinging’ character (for further information on the iconography of these two plants, see D.R. Smith, ‘Courtesy and its discontents: Frans Hals’s Portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen’, Oud Holland, C, 1986, p. 6). Moreover, the young woman dangling the bird before the leaping – decidedly male – dog no doubt would have elicited sexual connotations in the minds of contemporary viewers, for the Dutch word vogelen (birding) also means to engage in sex. Taken together, these symbols leave little room to doubt that Asselijn intended to draw an explicit comparison between the dog’s appetite for the bird and the young man’s interest in his female companion.