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Lot Essay
Woman feeding a parrot was, until recently, among the most celebrated treasures of the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, recognized for decades as one of Caspar Netscher's greatest paintings and one of the undisputed icons of Dutch genre painting of the Golden Age. "Unquestionably," wrote Marjorie Wieseman in her catalogue raisonné of the artist's paintings, this "sumptuous" work is "one of Netscher's masterpieces."
Best-known today as a painter of exquisite, highly finished domestic interiors, Caspar Netscher in fact produced surprisingly few before abandoning the genre altogether around 1670 for the more lucrative field of portraiture. A Dutch painter of German origin, Netscher was probably born in Heidelberg in 1639. He trained first in Arnhem under Hendrik Coster, a little known still-life and portrait painter, before moving in 1654 to Deventer, where he entered the workshop of the greatest genre painter of the day, Gerard ter Borch. Netscher quickly learned Ter Borch's technique of rendering the texture of costly materials, and he is known to have made very successful copies of his master's most recent works: a signed copy of Ter Borch's Parental Admonition (1654; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), dated 1655, is in Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, for example. That such works were allowed to be fully signed by Netscher suggests the special place he held in his master's studio.
After completing his training around 1659, Netscher set off for Italy, but never got further than Bordeaux where, on 25 November 1659 he married Margaretha Godijn, the daughter of a Walloon protestant émigré. He and his bride soon moved to The Hague, where Netscher joined the local painters' guild on 25 October 1662. During his earliest years in The Hague, he painted mostly genre scenes of low-life subjects in the manner of Ter Borch, such as The Kitchen (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), but by the middle of the decade, his palette began to lighten and his manner became more refined as he introduced elegant subject matter and settings into his paintings. Opulent interiors with expensively dressed gentlefolk are increasingly found in works such as the Gathering of Musicians (1666; Gemäldegalerie, Alte Meister, Dresden), where the fine rendering of silks and brocades reveal the increasing influence on his works of the 'fine painters' (fijnschilders) of the Leiden School, especially Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris. Looking to Dou's example, Netscher began to paint genre scenes with half-length figures in a niche or arched window over a sculpted frieze, such as Boys Blowing Bubbles (1670; National Gallery, London) and Woman feeding a Parrot.
The present painting is one of Netscher's most delightful and seductive creations. A beautiful and opulently dressed young woman stands behind an arched, trompe-l'oeil stone window niche holding a parrot she is about to feed. She has just removed the bird from its cage (the door swings open), which sits on the window ledge. A heavy burgundy damask curtain is pulled back to reveal a page boy in the shadowed room behind her, holding a silver salver with the parrot's treats on it. A costly Turkey carpet tumbles over the ledge, obscuring a carved inscription on the wall below.
The extraordinary fineness of the painting's execution - the superlative and meticulously rendered still life elements of the birdcage and carpet, the sumptuous silk and lace of the young woman's gown, the remarkable array of textures, from her milky flesh and shimmering hair, to the parrot's carefully delineated, multicolored feathers, and the cool, carved stone of the façade - show the strong influence of the Leiden 'fijnschilders', especially Van Mieris, but so too does the painting's subject matter. A woman feeding a parrot was a popular motif in Dutch painting from around 1660, and comparable images can be found in works by Van Mieris (Private collection, England and National Gallery, London), Gabriel Metsu (Pushkin Museum Moscow), Arie de Vois (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Godfried Schalcken (present whereabouts unknown) and Gerard Dou (formerly Gagarin collection, St. Petersburg), among others. Peter Sutton and others have noted that parrots were exotic and expensive pets, and ownership of one connoted fashionableness and privilege, the bird's gaudy plumage reiterating the vain preoccupations and extravagant dress of the women who owned them.
As Wieseman observes, the birds were often associated with luxury and sensuality, and "their central role in scenes of women holding or feeding parrots hints at amorous or erotic elements." Moreover, she adds, "a bird freed from its cage - in Netscher's painting, lured away with a bit of sweet - was often a symbol of lost virginity, and was associated with an invitation to amorous dalliance," a reading that seems hard to dispute in light of our young lady's coquettish but bold and inviting gaze. Interestingly, Wayne Franits has cited instances in which "the presence of parrots...signifies the proper training of their mistresses."
A superb preparatory drawing for the painting, in pen and bistre wash over black chalk underdrawing, is in the British Museum (no. 0.0.II-250; fig.1). The drawing, which was in the collection of Gabriel Huquier in Paris in the 18th century, is fully signed and dated 1666. Like his teacher Ter Borch, Netscher was an active draftsman and about 45 sheets from his hand survive. As with the study for Woman feeding a parrot, most of his drawings are modelli or compositional designs.
Nothing is known of the painting's earliest ownership, but it is probably the picture recorded in 1694 in the inventory of the estate of Pierre Plongeron, the chamberlain to the Elector Palatinate in The Hague. It is almost certainly the "fille avec un perroquet" that Dézallier d'Argenville mentions having seen in the Düsseldorf residence of Johan Wilhelm von den Paltz (d. 1716), the Elector Palatinate, in his Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, published between 1745-1752. Many copies of the painting are recorded, on both panel and canvas, none believed to be autograph; the best known copy is a panel acquired in 1741 for Augustus III, Elector of Saxony, and now in the collections of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. "The elegant sensitivity and accomplished technique" of the present painting, Wieseman notes, "is underscored by comparing the original with the numerous copies, most of which achieve nothing more than caricature."
Caspar Netscher, Young woman with a parrot, 1666, The British Museum, London, © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Best-known today as a painter of exquisite, highly finished domestic interiors, Caspar Netscher in fact produced surprisingly few before abandoning the genre altogether around 1670 for the more lucrative field of portraiture. A Dutch painter of German origin, Netscher was probably born in Heidelberg in 1639. He trained first in Arnhem under Hendrik Coster, a little known still-life and portrait painter, before moving in 1654 to Deventer, where he entered the workshop of the greatest genre painter of the day, Gerard ter Borch. Netscher quickly learned Ter Borch's technique of rendering the texture of costly materials, and he is known to have made very successful copies of his master's most recent works: a signed copy of Ter Borch's Parental Admonition (1654; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), dated 1655, is in Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, for example. That such works were allowed to be fully signed by Netscher suggests the special place he held in his master's studio.
After completing his training around 1659, Netscher set off for Italy, but never got further than Bordeaux where, on 25 November 1659 he married Margaretha Godijn, the daughter of a Walloon protestant émigré. He and his bride soon moved to The Hague, where Netscher joined the local painters' guild on 25 October 1662. During his earliest years in The Hague, he painted mostly genre scenes of low-life subjects in the manner of Ter Borch, such as The Kitchen (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), but by the middle of the decade, his palette began to lighten and his manner became more refined as he introduced elegant subject matter and settings into his paintings. Opulent interiors with expensively dressed gentlefolk are increasingly found in works such as the Gathering of Musicians (1666; Gemäldegalerie, Alte Meister, Dresden), where the fine rendering of silks and brocades reveal the increasing influence on his works of the 'fine painters' (fijnschilders) of the Leiden School, especially Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris. Looking to Dou's example, Netscher began to paint genre scenes with half-length figures in a niche or arched window over a sculpted frieze, such as Boys Blowing Bubbles (1670; National Gallery, London) and Woman feeding a Parrot.
The present painting is one of Netscher's most delightful and seductive creations. A beautiful and opulently dressed young woman stands behind an arched, trompe-l'oeil stone window niche holding a parrot she is about to feed. She has just removed the bird from its cage (the door swings open), which sits on the window ledge. A heavy burgundy damask curtain is pulled back to reveal a page boy in the shadowed room behind her, holding a silver salver with the parrot's treats on it. A costly Turkey carpet tumbles over the ledge, obscuring a carved inscription on the wall below.
The extraordinary fineness of the painting's execution - the superlative and meticulously rendered still life elements of the birdcage and carpet, the sumptuous silk and lace of the young woman's gown, the remarkable array of textures, from her milky flesh and shimmering hair, to the parrot's carefully delineated, multicolored feathers, and the cool, carved stone of the façade - show the strong influence of the Leiden 'fijnschilders', especially Van Mieris, but so too does the painting's subject matter. A woman feeding a parrot was a popular motif in Dutch painting from around 1660, and comparable images can be found in works by Van Mieris (Private collection, England and National Gallery, London), Gabriel Metsu (Pushkin Museum Moscow), Arie de Vois (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Godfried Schalcken (present whereabouts unknown) and Gerard Dou (formerly Gagarin collection, St. Petersburg), among others. Peter Sutton and others have noted that parrots were exotic and expensive pets, and ownership of one connoted fashionableness and privilege, the bird's gaudy plumage reiterating the vain preoccupations and extravagant dress of the women who owned them.
As Wieseman observes, the birds were often associated with luxury and sensuality, and "their central role in scenes of women holding or feeding parrots hints at amorous or erotic elements." Moreover, she adds, "a bird freed from its cage - in Netscher's painting, lured away with a bit of sweet - was often a symbol of lost virginity, and was associated with an invitation to amorous dalliance," a reading that seems hard to dispute in light of our young lady's coquettish but bold and inviting gaze. Interestingly, Wayne Franits has cited instances in which "the presence of parrots...signifies the proper training of their mistresses."
A superb preparatory drawing for the painting, in pen and bistre wash over black chalk underdrawing, is in the British Museum (no. 0.0.II-250; fig.1). The drawing, which was in the collection of Gabriel Huquier in Paris in the 18th century, is fully signed and dated 1666. Like his teacher Ter Borch, Netscher was an active draftsman and about 45 sheets from his hand survive. As with the study for Woman feeding a parrot, most of his drawings are modelli or compositional designs.
Nothing is known of the painting's earliest ownership, but it is probably the picture recorded in 1694 in the inventory of the estate of Pierre Plongeron, the chamberlain to the Elector Palatinate in The Hague. It is almost certainly the "fille avec un perroquet" that Dézallier d'Argenville mentions having seen in the Düsseldorf residence of Johan Wilhelm von den Paltz (d. 1716), the Elector Palatinate, in his Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres, published between 1745-1752. Many copies of the painting are recorded, on both panel and canvas, none believed to be autograph; the best known copy is a panel acquired in 1741 for Augustus III, Elector of Saxony, and now in the collections of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. "The elegant sensitivity and accomplished technique" of the present painting, Wieseman notes, "is underscored by comparing the original with the numerous copies, most of which achieve nothing more than caricature."
Caspar Netscher, Young woman with a parrot, 1666, The British Museum, London, © The Trustees of the British Museum.