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

How To CiteBakker, Piet. "Isaac de Jouderville." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
New York, 2017.
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The painter Isaac de Jouderville, son of Isaac de Jouderville and Magdalene Jansdr, was born in Leiden in
1612 or 1613. His father, a Frenchman from Metz, was a soldier when he married in Leiden in 1607, butsoon after became an innkeeper and art dealer. The painter was born in the De Drie Haringen inn, on thecorner 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 visited Leiden with his
entourage in 1618, he stayed at Jouderville’s inn. The building was diagonally opposite the parental homeof Gerrit Dou and a stone’s throw from the Weddesteeg, the street where Rembrandt was growing up atthat time. That Rembrandt would go on to teach both Dou and Jouderville in Leiden may in part be related
to the fact that they lived in the same neighborhood.
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
to Amsterdam 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 Manwith Gorget, 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 done twelve years earlier, prompted by the privileges that came with enrollment, including tax
exemption. In Leiden in 1636, Jouderville married Maria Lefevre, daughter of the art dealer Julius Lefevre
and Maycke van Houten, both from Antwerp, who had immigrated for religious reasons to Amsterdam in1600. Maria was born there around 1615, but moved with her parents to Leiden prior to 1623. Three weeks
after Maria’s marriage, her elder brother, Pieter Lefevre, wed Magdalena de Jouderville, Isaac’s sister, inLeiden. In 1641 Julius Lefevre settled a debt he owed his brother-in-law, the Amsterdam painter Carel van© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Isaac de JoudervillePage 2 of 3

Houten, with five works by Jouderville, 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 his sister Magdalena’s second marriage, this time to theAntwerp painter and art dealer Juliaen Teniers, brother of the much more famous South Netherlandish
genre painter David Teniers the Younger.
Jouderville’s son Jacob was baptized in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk on 26 March 1645. The artist musthave died not long thereafter, because his widow married the art dealer Pieter van Melder in 1648. Whenshe died in 1653 and Van Melder 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 married the famous painter Frederick de Moucheron in 1659, and her sister Isabella
married the painter Abraham de Rijp in 1674.
-Piet Bakker

Endnotes
1. For these receipts, see Abraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte derholländischen Kunst des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts , 8 vols. (The Hague,1919–21), 6:1950–58.
2. The interpretation of the relationship between Rembrandt and Jouderville after the latter’straining 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 standsto reason that Jouderville followed him and thus was Rembrandt’s first workshop assistant inAmsterdam; see Jaap van der Veen and F. Lammertse, Uylenburgh & Zoon: Kunst encommercie van Rembrandt tot de Lairesse, 1625–1675 (Zwolle, 2006), 136, 183. If one
assumes on the other hand that Rembrandt shuttled between Leiden and Amsterdam from 1631
to 1634, the year in which he married Saskia van Uylenburgh, then Jouderville would beconsidered Rembrandt’s former pupil who accompanied the master when he had a portrait
commission in Amsterdam, to execute its details; see S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, De jonge
Rembrandt onder tijdgenoten: Godsdienst en schilderkunst in Leiden en Amsterdam(Nijmegen, 2006), 199. On this issue, also see S. Liedtke, “Rembrandt’s ‘Workshop’ Revisited,”
Oud Holland 117, nos. 1–2 (2004): 56.

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Isaac de JoudervillePage 3 of 3

3. Portrait of a Young Man , panel, 48 x 37 cm (oval), once signed (National Gallery, Dublin),
Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt Schüler in vier Bänden , 6 vols. (Landau, 1983),
2:940; Bust of a Laughing Man with Gorget, panel, 52 x 49 cm, Museum Bredius, The Hague,ibid., 2:941.
4. Regionaal Archief Leiden, Notarial Archives, inv. 619 (notary F. Doude) (fol. 162), 15 January.
1641. See A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst
des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols. (The Hague, 1919–21), 3:1005.
5. For a transcript of the inventory of Pieter van Melder with the paintings by Jouderville, seeAbraham Bredius, Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst desXVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts, 8 vols. (The Hague, 1919–21), 6:968–1973.

Literature
De Groot, Cornelis Hofstede. “Isaac de Jouderville, leerling van Rembrandt.” Oud Holland
17 (1899): 228–35.
Bredius, Abraham. Künstler-Inventare: Urkunden zur Geschichte der holländischen Kunst
des XVIten, XVIIten und XVIIIten Jahrhunderts. 8 vols. The Hague, 1919–21, 6:1940–73;
7:126–28.
Bruyn, Josua et al. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, Vol. 1: 1625–31. The Hague, 1982,502–7.
Van de Wetering, Ernst. “Isaac de Jouderville.” In A. Blankert et al.,The Impact of a Genius:Rembrandt, His Pupils and Followers in the Seventeenth Century. Exh. cat. Amsterdam,Waterman Gallery; Groningen, Groninger Museum. Amsterdam, 1983, 59–69.
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 in vier Bänden. 6 vols. Landau, 1983,
2:1434–38; 6:3720–21.
Briels, Jan. Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw
1585–1630. Antwerp, 1997, 345, 388–89.
Liedtke, Walter. “Rembrandt’s ‘Workshop’ Revisited.” Oud Holland 117, nos. 1–2 (2004):
48–73 (esp. 68).

© 2017 The Leiden Collection