ISAAC KOEDIJCK (AMSTERDAM 1617-1666/8)
ISAAC KOEDIJCK (AMSTERDAM 1617-1666/8)
ISAAC KOEDIJCK (AMSTERDAM 1617-1666/8)
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This lot is offered without reserve.
ISAAC KOEDIJCK (AMSTERDAM 1617-1666/8)

A man holding an overturned wine glass in an interior with two servants kissing in a doorway beyond (Het leege wijnglas)

Details
ISAAC KOEDIJCK (AMSTERDAM 1617-1666/8)
A man holding an overturned wine glass in an interior with two servants kissing in a doorway beyond (Het leege wijnglas)
dated ‘ANNO 1648’ (on the map)
oil on panel
26 x 21 5/8 in. (66 x 55 cm.)
Provenance
(Probably) Arthur Kay (1860-1939), Edinburgh.
(Probably) with Julius Böhler, Munich, 1910.
Baron Léon Janssen (1849-1923), Brussels; (†) his sale, Frederik Muller, Amsterdam, 26 April 1927, lot 60.
C.J.K. van Aalst (1866-1939), Hoevelaken, by 1935.
with Brod Gallery, London.
with G. Cramer, The Hague, 1966.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 11 July 1979, lot 121.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 6 July 1994, lot 1, where acquired by the present owner.
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Die Koedijck-Rätsel und ihre Lösung,’ Jahrbuch der Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, XXIV, 1903, pp. 45-46, fig. 4.
W. Martin, Catalogue de la collection de peintures du Baron Janssen à Bruxelles, Brussels, 1923, pp. 86-87, no. 60, illustrated.
C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Isack Koedijck,’ Festschrift für Max J. Friedländer zum 60. Geburtstage, Leipzig, 1929, p. 189.
W. Bernt, Die Niederländischen Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts, II, Munich, 1948, no. 676, illustrated.
W. Bernt, The Netherlandish Painters of the 17th Century, II, London, 1970, no. 633, illustrated.
P.C. Sutton, Pieter de Hooch, Oxford, 1980, p. 20, fig. 15.
P.C. Sutton, Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Berlin and London, 1984, pp. 218, 230, under nos. 52 and 59, fig. 3.
W. Liedtke, A View of Delft: Vermeer and His Contemporaries, Zwolle, 2000, pp. 143-149, fig. 189.
M. Hollander, An Entrance for the Eyes: Space and Meaning in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art, Berkeley, CA, 2002, pp. 113, 115, fig. 51.
Exhibited
Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Vermeer, oorsprong en invloed: Fabritius, de Hooch, de Witte, 9 July-9 October 1935, no. 63a.
Special notice
This lot is offered without reserve.

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Lot Essay

Isaac Jansz. Koedijck worked predominantly in Holland, producing meticulously painted and observed genre scenes, in a tradition that artists like Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch would later adopt and develop. He travelled to the Far East in 1651 with the Dutch East India Company and remained there until 1659, trading and painting for the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (1592-1666). He later returned to the Netherlands, where he continued to work until his death.

This work shows a cavalier holding an upturned, empty wineglass in his right hand (after which the painting has traditionally been titled: Het leege wijnglas) and a hat on his knee with his left. The gentleman sits before a table, covered by a richly embroidered carpet, set with a gaming board and smoking apparatus. Above the table hangs a goat’s foot, probably a talisman to ward off evil, with a large map of the Netherlands on the back wall, dated 1648 and oriented from the west. With the empty overturned pewter jug, the cavalier’s empty glass and the abandoned apparel of the game on the table, the connotation is one of spent pleasure – a warning, perhaps, against over-indulgence, reinforced by the cavalier’s companion, who can be seen embracing a woman through the open doorway at right.

Koedijck took great interest in perspective and the construction of space in his pictures; the vanishing point in the present work can be identified in the goat’s foot hanging over the table, and indeed is placed almost directly over the position of The Hague on the far map, the seat of government of the Dutch Republic. The emphasis on this key city is pertinent given the painting's date. The year 1648 marked the end of the Eighty Years’ War between the United Provinces and the Spanish Habsburgs for control of the Northern Netherlands, and thus perhaps shows Koedijck reinforcing the Dutch Republic’s newly autonomous political status.

Koedijck produced at least one other version of this composition (Sutton, op. cit., p. 230, citing Hofstede de Groot, suggested there are three extant versions), also dated 1648, which is today at the Middlebury College Museum of Art (inv. no. 2010.022).

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