Singing Violinist

ca. 1666–70

Jacob Adriaensz Ochtervelt(Rotterdam 1634 – 1682 Amsterdam)oil on panel
26.9 x 19.5 cm
JO-100© 2018 The Leiden Collection

Singing Violinist
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How To Cite
Surh, Dominique. "Singing Violinist." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
New York, 2018.
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© 2018 The Leiden Collection

Singing Violinist
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Dressed in the fanciful costume of a performer, this alluring musician sings

Comparative Figures

to the tune of his violin while leaning out of an open window. His festive
attire harks back to early sixteenth-century styles, including the dark red
velvet beret with plumed feathers, the luxurious satin brown shirt withslashed ribbons, and the aubergine-colored velvet jacket slung casually
over the window sill. With heartfelt engagement in his music, the young
man peers at his audience from the corners of his eyes. One can almost
hear the tenor of his voice as it harmonizes with the notes of the violin andimagine the music rising in crescendo before falling away into silence.
This captivating image, which was first published as an autograph work by
Jacob Ochtervelt in 1979, relates closely to a group of other half-length
figures that the artist executed between 1665 and 1675.[1] Ochtervelt
appears to have based one of these paintings, Singing Violinist, 1666, inFig 1. Jacob Ochtervelt, Singing
Violinist, 1666, oil on panel, 26.7 x21.6 cm, Glasgow Art Museumand Gallery, © CSG CIC Glasgow
Museums and Libraries
Collections

the Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum (fig 1), on a work by the Leiden
artist Pieter van Noort (1622/25–72) (fig 2).[2] Van Noort’s Hearing fromca. 1635 is from a series devoted to the five senses, suggesting that
Ochtervelt’s painting in Glasgow, and by extension this work from The
Leiden Collection, may also have been conceived as Hearing in a now-lostseries of the five senses.[3] Susan Donahue Kuretsky has identified thesetwo depictions of a violinist, as well as a third example, as self-portraits.[4]More than one third of Ochtervelt’s oeuvre is devoted to musical subjects,
perhaps because, as Kuretsky suggests, he was a musician himself.[5] Themajority of these paintings depict interiors with full-length figures absorbed
in flirting, feasting, and playing music; all include precise representationsof instruments and an informed knowledge of how they were played. In theLeiden Collection painting, Ochtervelt portrays himself at ease, holding theFig 2. Pieter van Noort, Sense ofHearing: Singing Violinist, ca.
1635, oil on panel, 88.4 x 67 cm,
Landesmuseum, Münster,
199-202 WKV

instrument against his shoulder in accordance with how seventeenthcentury violins were played.[6] At the end of the violin’s neck, the frayedends of the strings hang in ringlets near the pegs. In all three of his selfportraits with a violin, Ochtervelt portrays his left hand fingering the samechord, as though he were representing a specific moment of a favoritesong.
Ochtervelt executed two other paintings from this period in which halflength figures appear in a window: Singing Woman, formerly on the art
market in Vienna (fig 3), and its presumed pendant, Man in a Niche,
dated

1668,

in

the

Städelsches

Kunstinstitut

inFrankfurt (fig© 2018 The Leiden Collection

Singing Violinist
Page 4 of 84).[7] Because of the similar size and corresponding musical subject matterof the Singing Woman with The Leiden Collection’s Self-Portrait, Otto
Naumann suggested that they may have been conceived as pendants.[8]Fig 3. Jacob Ochtervelt, Singing
Woman, ca. 1668, oil on panel,
26.5 x 19.5 cm, signed (sale,Dorotheum, Vienna, Alte Meister,15 October 2013, no. 526)

The similarity of the architectural niche in these two paintings, however, issomewhat misleading, since the present painting has been largely
reconstructed. During conservation treatment in 2008 it became evident
that the window element had suffered from abrasion and that an earlier
restorer had imaginatively overpainted the architecture with an archedwindow (fig 5). When this overpaint was entirely removed, it became clearthat the niche was a originally configured as a rectangle (fig 6). The
conservator therefore reconstructed the architectural details using theVienna and Frankfurt paintings as models, which is how the painting isseen today.[9] The idea that Singing Violinist and Singing Woman wereoriginally pendants is difficult to confirm, though possible. The suggestionthat the Singing Violinist may have been part of a pair, rather than one ofseries depicting the five senses, is also compelling.

Fig 4. Jacob Ochtervelt, Man in aNiche, 1668, oil on panel, 29 x 33
cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut,Frankfurt, © Städel Museum –ARTOTHEKRegardless, the artist’s treatment of the present Singing Violinist
demonstrates a deeper impact of the Leiden painting beyond the influenceof Van Noort’s example. Ochtervelt’s meticulous rendition of details andemulation of the interplay of light on different surfaces, including the soft
texture of his silk sleeves, flouncy quality of the feathers, and plushness ofthe velvet, connect this painting to the fijnschilder tradition of Leiden artists
such as Gerrit Dou (1613–75) and Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635–81).
[10]

Not only has Ochtervelt adopted a small-scale format similar to that of

his Leiden counterparts, but his use of a window derives from a motif thatappears frequently in Dou’s works. An exquisite painting by Dou from1653, Violin Player, now in the Princely Collections at Vaduz Castle,
Liechtenstein (fig 7), represents the type of painting—in scale, subject
matter, and composition—that inspired Ochtervelt.[11]Fig 5. Jacob Ochtervelt, Singing
Violinist, JO-100, pre-cleaned
state before treatment-Dominique Surh© 2018 The Leiden Collection

Singing Violinist
Page 5 of 8Fig 6. Jacob Ochtervelt, SingingViolinist, JO-100, actual state
during conservation in 2008

Fig 7. Gerrit Dou, Violin Player,
1653, oil on panel, arched top,
31.7 x 20.3 cm, The PrincelyCollections, Vaduz–Vienna© 2018 The Leiden Collection

Singing Violinist
Page 6 of 8Endnotes
1. Previously attributed to Ary de Vois, Otto Naumann brought this painting to the attention ofSusan Kuretsky, who was completing her monograph on the artist. See Susan Donahue
Kuretsky, The Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt (1634–1682) (Oxford, 1979), 20–22, 67, no.
34, fig. 63.
2. Hamish Miles, Dutch and Flemish, Netherlandish and German Paintings , 2 vols. (Glasgow,1961), 1:101, no. 590, 2:67, ill.; Angelika Lorenz, Renaissance und Barock im
Westfälischen Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Münster (Münster, 2000),
108–9.
3. Ochtervelt has also depicted himself as a smoker, which may have been intended torepresent the sense of taste; see Susan Donahue Kuretsky, The Paintings of JacobOchtervelt (1634–1682) (Oxford, 1979), 21; Susan Donahue Kuretsky, “The OchterveltDocuments,” Oud-Holland 87 (1973): 124–41, esp. 133–34.
4. On the entire group of paintings, see Susan Donahue Kuretsky, The Paintings of Jacob
Ochtervelt (1634–1682) (Oxford, 1979), 20–22, 66–67, nos. 33–35, 149, figs. 61–64.
5. Some 39 of about 100 total paintings from Ochtervelt’s oeuvre have musical subject matter.
See Susan Donahue Kuretsky, The Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt (1634–1682) (Oxford,1979), 20.
6. The Hoogsteder Exhibition of Music and Painting in the Golden Age (Exh. cat. The Hague,Kunsthandel Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder; Antwerp, Hessenhuis) (Zwolle, 1994), 365.
7. For Singing Woman, see Susan Donahue Kuretsky, The Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt(1634–1682) (Oxford, 1979), 21, 73, no. 47, fig. 70a; forMan in a Niche, see Städelsches
Kunstinstitut, Verzeichnis der Gemälde (Frankfurt, 1966), 91, no. 606, and Kuretsky, The
Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt, 21, 73–74, no. 48, fig. 70.
8. Personal correspondence with the author via e-mail, 3 October 2013, kept on file at theLeiden Collection.
9. According to Nancy Krieg’s private conservation treatment notes consulted by Annette
Rupprecht, Susan Donahue Kuretsky examined the painting in person in May 2008 andsuggested the Vienna and Frankfurt paintings as plausible models for how the painting’s
niche was probably originally intended. See Annette Rupprecht, “Technical Notes of aSinging Violinist by Jacob Ochtervelt, JO-100,” unpublished report dated May 2012,
curatorial files, The Leiden Collection.
10. Susan Donahue Kuretsky, The Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt (1634–1682) (Oxford, 1979),
20–21. See also the essay on the Leiden fijnschilders in this catalogue.
11. Ronni Baer, “Violin Player,” in Gerrit Dou, 1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age of© 2018 The Leiden Collection

Singing Violinist
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Rembrandt, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
London, Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis) (Washington D.C., 2000), 104–5,
no. 20.

Provenance
The Rev. J. M. Heath, Vicar of Enfield, by 1857, until at least 1880, as by Ary de Vois.
David Manin Currie, Kensington, London (his sale, Christie’s, London, 18 February 1921,no. 18, as by Ary de Voys [for 115.10 guineas to Spero]).
Private collection, Belgium (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 6 December 2007, no. 176 [Johnnyvan Haeften, Ltd., London]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2007.

Exhibition History
Leeds, “National Exhibition of Works of Art,” 1868, no. 680 [lent by the Rev. J. M. Heath].
Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art, “Vermeer Suite: Music in 17th-Century Dutch Painting,” 17January 2016–21 August 2016 [lent by the present owner].

References
Waagen, Gustav Friedrich. Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain: Being an accountof more than forty collections of painting, drawings, sculptures &c. &c. London, 1857, 318,
as by Ary de Vois.
National Exhibition of Works of Art. Exh. cat. Leeds, 1868, 47, no. 680, as by Ary de Vois.
Graves, Algernon. A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813 –1912. 5 vols. London, 1914, 1:279,
as by Ary de Vois.
Kuretsky, Susan Donahue. The Paintings of Jacob van Ochtervelt (1634–1682): withCatalogue Raisonné. Montclair and Oxford, 1979, 21, 67, no. 34, fig. 63.

Technical Summary© 2018 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Singing Violinist
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The support, a single plank of vertically grained, rectangular oak, has bevels on all four sides.[1]The panel is unthinned and uncradled and does not have machine tool marks. There are threerows of illegible black stencils but no wax collection seals, import stamps or panel maker’smarks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The oil paint has been applied insuccessive thin layers with areas of fine detail along the figure, his elegant clothes, and theinstrument. Although the contours of these forms are slightly raised, there is no use of impasto
throughout the composition.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The upper edge of the rectangular architectural niche has previously undergone a compositionalchange. At the time the painting was acquired, the upper edge of the niche had been falselyreconstructed with a shallow arch.[2] During conservation treatment, the original rectangularshape was revealed, and the upper edge of the niche was returned to its original rectangularformat.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at780–1000 nanometers or in the X-radiograph.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 2008 and remains in an excellent state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only. The front surface ofthe lower panel edge appears to have been prepared for dendrochronology sometime prior
to the painting’s acquisition.
2. A 2007 sales catalogue image of this painting and a February 2008 “before treatment”
color transparency both indicate the rectangular architectural niche previously had an arched
upper edge.

© 2018 The Leiden Collection