Isaac de Jouderville(Leiden ca. 1612 – 1648 Amsterdam)

How to cite
Bakker, Piet. “Isaac de Jouderville” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited by Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artists/isaac-de-jouderville/ (archived June2020).
A PDF of every version of this biography is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
occurs.

The painter Isaac de Jouderville, son of Isaac de Jouderville (1581–ca. 1629) and Magdalena Jansdr (d.
1629), was born in Leiden in 1612 or 1613. His father, a Frenchman from Metz, was a soldier when hemarried in Leiden in 1607, but soon after became an innkeeper and art dealer. The painter was born in the De
Drie Haringen inn, on the corner of the Noordeinde and the Korte Rapenburg in Leiden. Later renamed ’t
Schilt van Vranckrijck, it was one of the city’s most respectable establishments. When Prince Maurice(1556–1616) visited Leiden with his entourage in 1618, he stayed at Jouderville’s inn. The building was
diagonally opposite the parental home of Gerrit Dou (1613–75) and a stone’s throw from the Weddesteeg, thestreet where Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) was growing up at that time. That Rembrandt would go on toteach both Dou and Jouderville in Leiden may in part be related to the fact that they lived in the sameneighborhood.
Jouderville is one of the few Rembrandt pupils whose apprenticeship is supported by primary sources. Six
receipts signed by Rembrandt for the years 1630 and 1631 demonstrate that Jouderville received lessons
from the master as of 1 November 1629. Considering Jouderville’s age at the time, however, he most likely
had been studying with Rembrandt for longer. The receipts are contained in the accounts handed over toJouderville’s guardians after his parents died, one shortly after the other.[1] The final receipt relating to hisapprenticeship is dated 19 November 1631. This date suggests that Jouderville accompanied Rembrandt toAmsterdam and assisted him on a portrait the master was commissioned to make in that year.[2] The few
works by Jouderville himself from the early 1630s—Portrait of a Young Man and Bust of a Laughing Man withGorget, both ca. 1631—are greatly indebted to Rembrandt’s “Leiden” style.[3]In April 1632 Jouderville enrolled at Leiden University, presumably strictly for form’s sake as Rembrandt had© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Isaac de JoudervillePage 2 of 4

done twelve years earlier, prompted by the privileges that came with enrollment, including tax exemption. In
Leiden in 1636, Jouderville married Maria le Febure (1617–ca. 1653), daughter of the art dealer Julius leFebure (1586–1645) and Maycke van Houten (d. ca. 1639), both from Antwerp, who had immigrated forreligious reasons to Amsterdam in 1600. Maria was born there in 1617, but moved with her parents to Leiden
prior to 1623. Three weeks after Maria’s marriage, her elder brother, Pieter le Febure (1615–41), wed
Magdalena de Jouderville (1607–67), Isaac’s sister, in Leiden. In 1641 Julius le Febure settled a debt heowed his brother-in-law, the Amsterdam painter Carel van Houten (ca. 1606–45), with five works byJouderville, including a market scene and a fruit still life.[4]In May 1641 Jouderville and his wife, holding a certificate of membership of the Dutch Reformed Church,
moved to Deventer, in the province of Overijssel, where his brother-in-law Pieter had established himself as
an apothecary. Within two years, Jouderville and his wife moved again. A document dated 24 August 1643
states that Jouderville was about to relocate to Amsterdam, although it is possible he was already living there
because a month earlier he witnessed the second marriage of his sister Magdalena (after 1607–before 1667),
this time to the Antwerp painter and art dealer Juliaen Teniers II (1616–79), brother of the much more famousSouth Netherlandish genre painter David Teniers the Younger (1610–90).
Jouderville’s son Jacob was baptized in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk on 26 March 1645. The artist must havedied not long thereafter, because his widow married the art dealer Pieter van Meldert (1619–60) in 1648.
When she died in 1653 and Van Meldert had an inventory drawn up of all their possessions, his professional
stock contained almost ninety paintings, including four by Jouderville: a tronie, a still life, a landscape, and apicture of a horse.[5] Also hanging in the house were two miniature portraits of Jouderville and his wife. Theirdaughter Maria (1636–1719) married the famous painter Frederick de Moucheron (ca. 1633–86) in 1659, andher sister Isabella (1640–75) married the painter Abraham de Rijp (1644–1720) in 1674.

- Piet Bakker, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Isaac de JoudervillePage 3 of 4Endnotes

1. For these receipts, see Abraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte derholländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (The Hague, 1919), 6:
1950–58.
2. The interpretation of the relationship between Rembrandt and Jouderville after the latter’s
training ended in November 1631 depends on one’s view of where Rembrandt was living in
1631. If one assumes that Rembrandt moved from Leiden to Amsterdam in 1631, then it
stands to reason that Jouderville followed him and thus was Rembrandt’s first workshop
assistant in Amsterdam; see Friso Lammertse and Jaap van der Veen, Uylenburgh & Son: Artand Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse, 1625–1675 (Exh. cat. London, Dulwich
Picture Gallery; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (Zwolle, 2006), 136, 183. If one
assumes on the other hand that Rembrandt shuttled between Leiden and Amsterdam from1631 to 1634, the year in which he married Saskia van Uylenburgh (1612–42), thenJouderville would be considered Rembrandt’s former pupil who accompanied the master
when he had a portrait commission in Amsterdam, to execute its details; see Sebastien A.C.
Dudok van Heel, De jonge Rembrandt onder tijdgenoten. Godsdienst en schilderkunst inLeiden en Amsterdam (Nijmegen, 2006), 199. On this issue, also see Walter S. Liedtke,“Rembrandt’s ‘Workshop’ Revisited,” Oud Holland 117, nos. 1–2 (2004): 56.
3. Portrait of a Young Man, ca. 1631 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), Werner
Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. Vol. 2, G. van den Eeckhout – I. deJoudreville (Landau, 1983), 940; Bust of a Laughing Man with Gorget, ca. 1631 (MuseumBredius, The Hague); Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. Vol. 2, G. vanden Eeckhout – I. de Joudreville (Landau, 1983), 941.
4. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Notarial Archives, inv. 619, Notary F. Doude, fol. 162, 15 January.
1641. See Abraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischenKunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (The Hague, 1917), 3: 1005.
5. For a transcript of the inventory of Pieter van Melder with the paintings by De Jouderville, see
Abraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst desXVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts (The Hague, 1919), 6: 968–1973.

Literature
De Groot, Cornelis Hofstede. “Isaac de Jouderville, leerling van Rembrandt.” Oud Holland 17(1899): 228–35.
© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Isaac de JoudervillePage 4 of 4Bredius, Abraham. Kunstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der hollandischen Kunst desXVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts. 8 vols. The Hague, 1915–22, 6:1940–73;
7:126–28.
Bruyn, Joshua, et al. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Vol. 1: 1625–1631. Stichting
Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. The Hague, Boston, and London, 1982, 502–7.
Van de Wetering, Ernst. “Isaac de Jouderville.” In The Impact of a Genius: Rembrandt, hisPupils and Followers in the Seventeenth Century. Edited by Guido Jansen and Ernst van deWetering, 59–69. Exh. cat. Amsterdam, K. & V. Waterman Gallery; Groningen, GroningerMuseum, Amsterdam, 1983.
Liedtke, Walter. “Reconstructing Rembrandt: Portraits from the Early Years in Amsterdam(1631–1634).” Apollo 129 (1989): 323–31, 371–72.
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. 6 vols. Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94.,
2:1434–38; 6:3720–21.
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1585–1630. Antwerp, 1997, 345, 388–89.
Liedtke, Walter. “Rembrandt’s ‘Workshop’ Revisited.” Oud Holland 117, nos. 1–2 (2004):
48–73 (esp. 68).

© 2020 The Leiden Collection