Card Players
Jan Lievens(Leiden 1607 – 1674 Amsterdam)ca. 1625
oil on canvas
97.5 x 105.4 cm
signed with initials in dark paint, upper left:“I.L.”
JL-102© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
DeWitt, Lloyd and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. “Card Players” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed.
Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/the-card-players/(archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry 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 narrativeoccurs.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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To judge from the chalk marks on the back wall, each indicating a drink

Comparative Figuresordered from the innkeeper, it has been a long night of gambling and, to theintent pleasure of the kibitzers crowding the table, the stakes and tensions
have clearly risen with every card the two soldiers have played.[1] Jan
Lievens’s painting, however, is not so much about the game itself as about
the expressions on the protagonists’ faces at that dramatic moment when
one of the players must deal with the sudden realization that he has lost.
Holding his five of hearts loosely in his hand, the vanquished gambler stares
in disbelief at the ace of hearts triumphantly held aloft by his helmeted

Fig 1. Workshop of Gerrit vanHonthorst, The Card Players,
1624, oil on canvas, 125 x 190 cm,
Gemäldegalerie, Wiesbaden, M
409

opponent. Even if it were not for the obvious juxtaposition of the winning andlosing cards or the intent gazes of this companions as they measure hisreaction, the soldier’s body language and downward expression would beenough to tell the story.
This dramatic painting from the beginning of Lievens’s career demonstrates
how thoroughly the young Leiden artist internalized the thematic andcompositional innovations of the Utrecht Caravaggisti from the early 1620s.
When Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656) returned to Utrecht in 1620, hebrought with him an artistic repertoire that featured depictions of card andbackgammon players huddled around a table.[2] Honthorst’s compositions

Fig 2. Dirck van Baburen, The
Mocking of Christ, ca. 1622, oil oncanvas, 106 x 136 cm, Museum
Catharijnconvent, Utrecht

were tightly cropped, with the viewer inevitably situated close to the action,
peering into the game over the shoulder of one of the players. Gambling is anight sport, where passions and foolish behavior are allowed their full range,
their limits decided only by the size of the gamblers’ purses. In his nowlost Card Cheats, known today only from a workshop replica (fig 1),
Honthorst exploited the darkness of the surroundings to unite the action, as
light from a lantern in the middle of the table brightly illuminates the faces ofthe players and their cohorts, including that of the silhouetted gambler whose
arm hides the light source.
Not surprisingly, prior to the discovery of the monogram IL, Lievens’s

Fig 3. Jan Lievens, Tric Trac
Players, ca. 1623, oil on canvas,
100 x 105 cm, Spier Collection,London

painting was attributed to Honthorst.[3] The close compositional similarities toHonthorst’s gambling paintings, however, also reveal significant differencesin Lievens’s figure types and body language, not to mention brushwork, thathelp distinguish the work of the two artists. Lievens’s gamblers are acoarser, lower-class group than Honthorst’s card cheats. They sit in an
extremely tight circle, their forms more tightly compressed and restrained
than those in Honthorst’s painting, with the result that the figures’ facialexpressions rather than their gestures become the painting’s focus.
Lievens’s bold brushwork, rough and unmodulated, and totally in keeping© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Card PlayersPage 4 of 10with the character of the players seated at the table, also differs from
Honthorst’s smooth and elegant manner of painting. Finally, as ischaracteristic of other early genre scenes by the artist, Lievens seems tooffer no moral judgment on the action of the card players. Whereas
Honthorst followed a long iconographic tradition by emphasizing thedeceitfulness and moral corruption of the game, Lievens departs entirely
from such a narrative. His gamblers are involved in a game of chance, andthe challenge he set for himself was to capture the emotions at the momentof truth.
Honthorst was not the only artist among the Utrecht Caravaggisti who tightly
cropped his compositions in the early 1620s, so also did Dirck van Baburen(ca. 1595–1624), as seen in The Mocking of Christ from ca. 1622 (fig 2).

Fig 4. Jan Lievens, An Old Man
Holding a Skull, ca. 1630, oil on
panel, 61.6 x 48.3 cm, private
collection

Lievens must have known Van Baburen’s painting, for he based the figure of
the silhouetted card player on the helmeted soldier in the latter’s work.
Lievens probably also responded to the aggressive chiaroscuro effects in
Van Baburen’s paintings and the rugged physicality of his figures.
Lievens may have painted Card Players as a pendant to another gambling
scene, Tric Trac Players (fig 3), for the two works have virtually the same
dimensions, a similar compositional focus, are both painted on canvas, anddate

fromtheSchnackenburg

earlyhastonoted,

mid-1620s.[4]Card

Nevertheless,PlayersisasBernhard

compositionallymoresophisticated than is Tric Trac Players and is painted in a far bolder, moreassured technique.[5] These stylistic differences, which suggest that the twoworks were painted sequentially, demonstrate how rapidly Lievens matured
as an artist during these years.
Lievens’s Card Players belongs to a genre of guardroom and tavern scenesof soldiers that only developed in the 1620s. In an era racked by conflict, thepresence of soldiers in the Netherlands was nearly constant, especially after
the resumption of hostilities with Spain upon the termination of the TwelveYear Truce in 1621. These men were mainly foreign mercenaries whosedaily lives swung between periods of violence and boredom. Many lived anunanchored existence, a great deal of it passed in the demimonde of taverns
and low company. Dutch genre paintings often concerned themselves withmoral boundaries, and because scenes of soldiers often included depictionsof gambling, indolence, prostitution, drunkenness, and other activities thattransgressed these limits, they were very effective in holding the public’sinterest.[6]Lievens did not paint real soldiers or depict an actual situation, but rather© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Card Players
Page 5 of 10dressed up local models to take on roles in this small human drama. Forexample, the man at the right also appears in Tric Trac Players (fig 3) and in
Lievens’s An Old Man Holding a Skull, ca. 1630 (fig 4). Jan Jansz. Orlers,
the Leiden burgomaster, historian, and art lover who wrote about Lievens in
his 1641 history of Leiden, owned this latter painting.[7] In the 1640 inventoryof his possessions the painting is described as “the keeper of the Almshousewith a Skull in his hand.”[8] Two archival documents reveal that in 1629 and1631 the financial officer (rentmeester) of the Sint Catharina Gasthuys inLeiden was named Jan van Heussen, who resided in the Rijn district of town,
where both Lievens and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) lived.[9] This model
also sat for other Leiden artists, among them an anonymous artist who
painted Elderly Man in the Leiden Collection (GD-109), and Rembrandt, in
his Old Man in a Fur Cap (Tiroler Landesmuseum, Innsbruck).[10]Young painters also used fellow artists and friends as models to save theexpense of hiring professionals. The young man with the pipe in the centerof Card Players is likely Rembrandt, who posed for Lievens a number oftimes, as in a portrait of ca. 1629 (private collection, on loan to Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam).[11] Lievens, in turn, appeared in several of Rembrandt’s earlyworks, as in Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing), ca. 1624, in the Leiden
Collection (RR-105). Rembrandt and Lievens would develop an artistic
friendship and rivalry in which they forged a radically new style whoserealism and drama are already evident in this work.

- Lloyd DeWitt and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Card PlayersPage 6 of 10Endnotes

1. This entry is based, in large part, on the one that appears in Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., JanLievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven,2008), 86–87, no. 3.
2. Richard J. Judson and Rudolf E. O. Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, 1592–1656 (Doornspijk,1999), 17–19.
3. On the reverse of the painting is a label with the name “Van Honthorst.” The first art
historians to recognize the correct attribution were B. J. A. Renckens and R. E. O. Ekkart in1976 (letter to the then owner). See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master
Rediscovered (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art
Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 289 n. 2.
4. John Twilley, “Interim Thread Count Report” (2009) of The Card Players Study Day, The
Leiden Collection, New York, July 9, 2010, notes that the canvas in Card Players has a moreregular weave than does that of Tric Trac Players.
5. Bernhard Schnackenburg, in the entry on the painting in the auction catalogue (Sotheby’s,Amsterdam, May 8, 2007, lot 77).
6. Jochai Rosen, Soldiers at Leisure: The Guardroom Scene in Dutch Genre Painting of theGolden Age (Amsterdam, 2010), 78, n. 15.
7. For Orlers and Lievens, see Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. in Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master
Rediscovered (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee ArtMuseum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 5.
8. “De Coster van het Gasthuys met een Dootshooft inden arm.” See: Rudolf E. O. Ekkart andMaarten L. Wurfbain, eds., Geschildert tot Leyden anno 1626 (exh. cat., Leiden, Stedelijk
Museum de Lakenhal) (Leiden, 1976), 18; Meredith Hale in Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master
Rediscovered, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven,2008), 124, 290 nn. 7 and 8. See also sale catalogue, Christies, London, 6 December 2007,
lot 7446.
9. For Van Heussen as rentmeester, see the inventory of the Sint Catharinagasthuys, Regionaal
Archief Leiden, Gasthuizen, arch. 504, inv. I.1.3.26 and 27. For further information on VanHeussen, see Henriette Rahusen’s entry on Leiden School, Elderly Man (GD-109).
10. See Meredith Hale in Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock
Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum;
Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 290 n. 7.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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11. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (Exh. cat.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam,Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 114–15, no. 17, ill.

ProvenanceOvide Ghislain (died 1944), Jemappes, Belgium, by 1927; by descent to his grandchild,Belgium (sale, Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 8 May 2007, no. 77 [to Johnny van Haeften, Ltd.,London]). [1]From whom acquired by the present owner in 2007.

Provenance Notes1. Card Players was in Ghislain’s collection when it was first recorded in a certificate dated 3
October 1927. In that certificate, René Tonus of Brussels authenticated the painting as byGerrit van Honthorst; Lievens’s initials were by then covered with dirt and old varnish.
Ghislain was killed by Nazi forces in 1944, but the painting was retained by his survivingfamily. In 1976, B. J. A. Renckens of the RKD and R. E. O. Ekkart correctly identified thework as by Lievens, after correspondence with Ghislain’s descendant.

Exhibition History
Washington, National Gallery of Art, “Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered,” 26October 2008–11 January 2009; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum, 7 February–26 April
2009; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 17 May–9 August 2009, no. 3 [lent by thepresent owner].
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, August 2011–November 2016 [lent by the presentowner].
Paris, Museé du Louvre, “Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt,” 22February–22 May 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces of The LeidenCollection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden
Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lentby the present owner].
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Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the presentowner].
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection,” 5 September 2018–13 January 2019 [lent by thepresent owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May
2019 [lent by the present owner].

References
Schnackenburg,Bernhard.

“JanLievensundPieter

deGrebber.” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 68 (2007): 194–99, figs. 13, 14, 15; 216 n. 57.
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master.” In Jan Lievens:
A Dutch Master Rediscovered. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., 8, 11, 86–87, no. 3. Exh.
cat., Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum;
Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis. New Haven, 2008.
Coutré, Jacquelyn N. “Vanquishing the Shadow: Jan Lievens Comes to Light after 250Years.” Dutch Crossing 33 (October 2009): 135–51, no. 1.
Schnackenburg, Bernhard. Jan Lievens: Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt.
Petersberg, 2016, 42, 47, 180, no. 17.
Surh, Dominique. “Card Players.” In Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age ofRembramdt. Edited by Blaise Ducos and Dominique Surh, 74, no. 27. Exh. cat. Paris, Muséedu Louvre. Paris, 2017.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Rembrandt and His Time: China and the Dutch Republic in theGolden Age.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Editedby Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 10; 14, no. 7. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing, National
Museum of China. Beijing, 2017
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Card Players.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from TheLeiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 34–35; 173, no. 7. Translated by Li Ying.
Exh. cat. Beijing, National Museum of China. Beijing, 2017.
Long Museum, West Bund. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund.
Shanghai, 2017, 56.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In The Age of© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Card PlayersPage 9 of 10Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina
Lyubimova, 21; 31. Translated by Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, ThePushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Moscow,2018.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Card Players.” In The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpiecesof The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova, 106–7; 235, no. 20. Translated byDaria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts;
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Moscow, 2018.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In Rembrandt,Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and theMusée du Louvre. Edited by Blaise Ducos and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 28. Exh. cat. Abu
Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi. London, 2019. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French andArabic.]
Ducos, Blaise, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, eds. Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch GoldenAge. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu
Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi. London, 2019, 54, 72–3, no. 13. [Exhibition catalogue also
published in French and Arabic.]

Technical Summary
The support is composed of two pieces of medium-weight, plain-weave fabric with a lined
horizontal join near the center of the composition, just below the chins of all four figures.[1] All fourtacking margins have been removed, and there is cusping along all but the right edge. In 2009 theThread Count Automation Project (TCAP) confirmed the support has been cut down along theright edge and that the support’s regular-weave pattern indicates it belongs to the category
known as the “Vermeerian” type.[2] Repetitive horizontal creases suggest the support may havebeen previously rolled. There are no wax seals, canvas stamps, inscriptions, or labels along thelining or stretcher reverse.
A double ground, composed of an orange-brown lower layer lacking lead white followed by a graygreen ground composed of earth pigments with some lead white, has been applied.
The paint has been applied in a confident manner with broad, bold strokes. The surface of thepainting has an overall smooth appearance with textured highlights, deliberately executed with
impasto and well-defined brushwork.
The profile of the soldier whose back is turned to the viewer was executed after the central figure,
who may depict Rembrandt, as the central figure’s flesh tones are visible beneath the red brown
tones of the soldier’s face.
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No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 900–1700 nanometers. The
images reveal minor compositional changes to the contour of the soldier’s proper left shoulder,which has been extended slightly with a lighter brown paint and lies on top of the chin of theadjacent figure on the left.
The painting has been signed with initials in dark paint along the upper left but is undated.
The painting was cleaned, lined, and restored in 2007 and remains in a good state ofpreservation.[3]Technical Summary Endnotes

1. According to Devi Ormond’s 2013 examination report, it is unclear whether this is a seam ora tear.
2. TCAP codirectors: C. Richard Johnson Jr. of Cornell University and Don H. Johnson of RiceUniversity.
3. Entry based on 2013 examination report by Devi Ormond, Associate Paintings Conservator,
J. Paul Getty Museum.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection