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Anthonie Palamedesz A Wedding Breakfast oil on panel 19 ¼ × 28 ¾ inches (48.4 × 73 cm.) PROVENANCE: |
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EXHIBITED LITERATURE Sunlight pours in from an unseen window in the upper left corner illuminating the table and celebrants of Anthonie Palamedesz’s A Wedding Breakfast. The bride and groom are seated in the left foreground resplendently dressed. The bride’s glance directly engages the viewer, while the groom gazes happily off into the distance. Although hidden beneath the folds of the bride’s voluminous gown, the couple holds hands, a gesture that has been connected with weddings since ancient times. In Dutch art and literature of the seventeenth century it was symbolic of marital concord.1 When the painting was exhibited in the Royal Academy – Winter Exhibition, 1887, a reviewer for the Athenaeum described the simplicity yet expressiveness of the work stating “The seated figures of the lady and gentleman in the foreground… could hardly be surpassed.”2 Accompanying the couple are five elegant guests as well as a lute player who provides the entertainment. The music being played also serves as a metaphor for the Dutch concept of harmonie en huwelijk, or harmony and marriage, felt to be an essential part of a successful union.3 Completing the celebration is the large raised pie in the center of the table. Typically these pies were filled with seasoned beef, chicken or veal and then flavored with mace, pepper and nutmeg, accompanied by lemons as is visible on the table, and often served at banquets. The decorative zigzag pattern of the crust was standard. To the right of the pie is a large egg-shaped pastry probably covered with marzipan and decorated with sugar-covered cinnamon bark sticks (a favorite confection) standing on a glass pedestal dish.4 Marzipan was traditionally made for betrothals. Possibly the tall glass at the right end of the table represents the traditional hippocras usually made from diluted Rhine wine spiced with cloves and ginger that was drunk at weddings.5 A cupboard flanks the celebration to the right, while the deep shadow on the left along with the coat draped chair join to act as a repoussoir, a common device in these scenes used to increase the illusion of depth and space. A pair of sunny landscapes hang on the rear wall, possibly embodying the hope for fair weather in the couple’s future. Pentimenti, for example in the reworking of the chair legs on the left, records the artist’s fine-tuning of his original concept. Dr. Paul Huys Janssen has noted how close this panel is to Palamedesz’s Company Dining and Making Music dated 1632 in the Mauritshuis, The Hague.6 Both are on almost equally sized panels and feature the same basic compositional formats with altered figural groups. Shared are the overall light tonality and essential staging of the rooms which include such details as standing cupboards flanking the right walls, two horizontal paintings hung on the rear walls, bright lights and deep shadows cast from the left and groups of seated figures around tables covered with identical white linen clothes edged with gold trim that are set to the right sides of the rooms. Further comparable features are coat draped chairs to the left and the positioning of tasseled red cushion covered three-legged turned stools with seated young gallants dressed in black and white costumes dramatically placed in the foregrounds to create focal points for the pictures. The display of fashion was an important component of these paintings and the two works show the same period of stylish dress and in some cases identical outfits with different coloration. Even the unusual egg-shaped pastry appears on both tables. As Palamedesz only began to date his paintings in 1632 7 the similarities of the two panels are important in establishing the date of execution for A Wedding Breakfast as circa 1632. Anthonie Palamedesz was the son of a gem cutter in Delft. Anthonie’s father is documented as working for James I circa 1601 and it is possible that his brother the battle-scene painter Palamedes Palamedesz I was born in London. Although it is unknown who trained Anthonie, it is believed to have been Michiel van Mierevelt and/or Hendrick Pot who was in Delft in 1620. By 1621 he had joined the Delft Guild of Saint Luke and in 1635, 1658, 1663 and 1672 served as its headman. He married twice and had four children. His oldest son was the painter Palamedes Palamedesz II. 8 The artist is well known for his scenes of merry or musical companies. These works reflect the influence of Dirck Hals, Pieter Codde, Willem Duyster and Hendrick Pot. Although Palamedesz painted these companies throughout his career those that date from 1632-1634 are considered his most successful. In the 1640s and 1650s he often produced guardroom scenes that recall the works of Willem Cornelisz Duyster and Jacob Duck. He also painted portraits, landscapes, a few still lives, and provided staffage for Anthonie de Lorme and Dirck van Delen in their architectural views. His pupils included his brother and son as well as Ludolf de Jongh and Jacob van Velsen. 9 William George Rawlinson was a noted scholar and collector of Joseph Mallord William Turner. In 1878 he published a catalogue on Turner’s print series Liber Studiorum titled Turner’s Studiorumia Description and a Catalogue. In 1908 and 1913 he produced two volumes of the Engraved Works of J.M.W. Turner. Much of the 900 prints featured were drawn from Rawlinson’s personal collection. Part of his collection was sold to Samuel L. Courtauld and eventually passed to the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. His collection of the Liber Studiorum is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 10 James Van Alen was the son of the Civil War General James H. Van Alen. The family was based in New York and their wealth came from the railroads. In 1875 James Van Alen eloped with Emily Astor (1854-1881), the eldest daughter of Mrs. Caroline Schermerhorn Backhouse Astor and William Backhouse Astor, Jr. She died in childbirth in 1881, leaving behind three children. An Anglophile, Van Alen maintained a 4,000 acre fifteenth century estate in Northamptonshire called Rushton Hall.11 In his drive to make it a showcase the New York Times noted “he expended great sums, paying if report be correct, extraordinary and unnecessarily high prices for certain pieces of furniture and bits of decoration which he required to complete the artistic ensemble he had planned out.” The article goes on to give further example of how far Van Alen would go to acquire the best. “Through his garden at Rushton Hall Mr. Van Alen is likely to get back a good deal of the money (referring to a plan to sell blooms to the London market) the shrewd English tradesmen screwed out of him when he was furnishing his house. Mr. Van Alen has raised the gardens of Rushton Hall to the first rank in England. He has enlisted the services of James Carmichael, who formerly was in charge of the royal gardens of Windsor Castle, and who is said to command a salary of $10,000 a year.” 12 In 1883 Van Alen stayed at Wakehurst Place, an E-plan Elizabethan stone manor house in Sussex, after which he decided to adopt the basic form and many of its specific decorative schemes to his own mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. Renaming the house Wakehurst, construction began in 1884 and lasted until 1888. Furnishings as well as entire period rooms were imported and incorporated from various recently demolished European residences. 13 We would like to thank Peter G. Rose for the identification of the food depicted and her assistance in the writing of this entry. Dr. Paul Huys Janssen has confirmed the painting to be by Anthonie Palamedesz and we are grateful for his help in the preparation of this entry. 1Wayne Frantis, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2004, p. 108. 2“The Royal Academy – Winter Exhibition”, in The Athenaeum, op. cit., pp. 228-229. 3For a discussion of the topic see E. de Jongh, “Harmonie en huwelijk” in Portretten van echt en trouw, Huwelijk en gezin in de Nederlandse kunst van de zeventiende eeuw, exhibition catalogue Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem, February 15 – May 19, 1986, pp. 280-290. 4Written communication with the food historian Peter G. Rose dated December 19, 2009. 5Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988, p. 186. 6Written communication with Dr. Paul Huys Janssen dated January 4, 2010. 7Axel Rüger, “Anthonie Palamedesz” in Vermeer and the Delft School, exhibition catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, March 8 – May 27, 2001, p. 319. 8Biographical information taken from Peter C. Sutton “Anthonie Palamedesz.,” in From Rembrandt to Vermeer, St. Martin’s Press, New York, pp. 245-246, and Axel Rüger, op. cit., pp. 318-320. 9Ibid. 10Biographical information taken from “William George Rawlinson” in The Concise Dictionary of National Biography, volume III, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992, p. 2491 and the website maintained by the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University, Dictionary of Art Historians, www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/rawlinsonw.htm. 11James L. Yarnell, Newport Through its Architecture, University Press of New England / Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island, 2005, p. 125. 12“James J. Van Alen Selling Flowers” in The New York Times, March 28, 1908, p. C3. 13Yarnell, op. cit., p. 125. |
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