Interior with a Sick Woman by aFireplace
Jacobus Vrel
(Active 1654 – 1662)

ca. 1654–56
oil on panel
57.3 x 47.7 cm
JV-100© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace
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How to cite
Van Tuinen, Ilona. “Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue,
2nd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/aninterior-with-a-sick-woman-by-a-fireplace/ (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 narrative
occurs.

This peaceful domestic scene depicts an older woman seated on a wooden

Comparative Figureschair in a sober interior, her head leaning against a large, white pillow
propped up against a tall fireplace. A cat and a small dog curled up in front of
the hearth comfortably enjoy the warmth emitted by its smoldering flames. To
the right of the brown-and-tan tiled fireplace hangs a shovel suspended froma hook, and on the floor nearby are tongs, a dark terra cotta pot, and a footwarmer. Resting on the wooden hood of the fireplace are simple, white,
earthenware plates decorated with delicate blue designs, two brass
candlesticks, and a single orange. Suspended from hooks attached to thebottom of the wooden hood, from which also hangs a dark cloth skirting, is asmall

ornamental[1]

vessels.

candleholder,symmetricallyflankedbymetal

The empty chair on the right reinforces the quiet, solitary characterof this woman’s life.
In 1935, Clotilde Brière-Misme identified this painting as the “sick woman
sitting by a Dutch fireplace” recorded in the 1659 inventory of the art

Fig 1. Jacob Vrel, Woman Looking
Out of a Window, 1654, oil on
panel, 66 x 47.5 cm,
Kunsthistorisches Museum,Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, inv. 6081

collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (1614–62), governor to the
Spanish Netherlands at the court in Brussels from 1647–56.[2] Indeed, thepillow and the woman’s half-open eyes and slightly raised eyebrows dosuggest that she is unwell.[3] In the inventory this work is described as beinga pendant to Jacobus Vrel’s painting of a “woman looking out of awindow” (fig 1).[4] The scene in the latter painting, which is in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, is situated in a similar room with an
identical fireplace. Dated 1654, it is Vrel’s earliest extant dated work. Brière© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace
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Misme’s hypothesis has been generally accepted even though the verticaldimensions of Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace are substantiallyless than those of Woman Looking Out of a Window.[5] Brière-Misme
postulated that the two paintings once had identical dimensions andthat Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace had subsequently been cut at
the top.[6]Technical analysis has confirmed Brière-Misme’s hypothesis. The absenceof a bevel along the top edge of the panel, as well as the small chips along
this edge, indicate that the panel was cut.[7] The painting’s earlier
appearance is seen in a photograph taken in 1928, when it was with art
dealer Van Diemen & Co in Berlin (fig 2).[8] At that time the painting wasabout nine centimeters taller, the size difference between it and Woman
Looking Out of a Window. Moreover, the versos of the Vienna and the
Leiden Collection panels are remarkably similar in appearance, indicatingthat the panels were made by the same craftsman around the same time (fig3).[9]
Even if the Leiden Collection and Vienna paintings were considered to be

Fig 2. Jacob Vrel, Interior with a
Sick Woman by a Fireplace(JV-100), 1928 photographshowing addition, taken while it
was with the dealer Diemen & Co.,
Berlin, preserved on a photo
mount at RKD (Rijksbureau voor
Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands
Institute for Art History), The
Hague

pendants when they were in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm,
there is no proof that Vrel originally intended them as a pair. There are noother known examples in his oeuvre of pendant paintings. It is not known
either how the works entered that collection, whether separately or together,or whether they came through the initiative of the archduke’s curator in
Brussels, David Teniers the Younger (1610–90).[10] Nevertheless, whether or
not they were conceived as pendants, these two paintings complement eachother in the ways they evoke the solitude of human life (fig 4).
Several old references record that the painting was once signed and dated
on a piece of paper attached to the nail on the fireplace, yet no trace of thispaper remains today.[11] It is likely, however, that Vrel executed this workaround 1654, the year in which its purported pendant was created, andFig 3. Left: reverse of Jacob Vrel,
An Interior with a Sick Woman bya Fireplace (JV-100), photo:
Annette Rupprecht; and right:
reverse of the panel in Vienna

certainly before 1656, the year in which Leopold Wilhelm’s term as governorof the Spanish Netherlands in Brussels ended and he returned toVienna.[12] If this date is correct, this painting and the panel in Vienna, Vrel’s
earliest known dated work, were executed several years before Pieter deHooch began painting his interior genre scenes. As Peter Sutton has
suggested, Vrel seems to have “anticipated Delft artists’ interest in domestic
themes.”[13] It is therefore frustrating that Vrel’s origins and training remain amystery.[14] None of the simple and inexpensive objects, including the blue
and white earthenware displayed on the fireplace mantle, ubiquitous© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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throughout Europe, has shed any light on the region in which this enigmatic
artist resided.

- Ilona van Tuinen, 2017

Fig 4. Left: Jacob Vrel, Woman
Looking Out of a Window, 1654, oil
on panel, 66 x 47.5 cm,
Kunsthistorisches Museum,Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, inv.
6081; and right: Jacob Vrel, An
Interior with a Sick Woman by aFireplace (JV-100), 1928
photograph showing extended
format© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace
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Endnotes

1. Wooden hoods and cloth skirting around fireplaces were common in the mid-seventeenth
century. See Mariët Westermann, “Hendrick Martensz Sorgh: Portrait of the Bierens Family,
1663,” in Art & Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt (Exh. cat. Newark, The
Newark Museum; Denver, Denver Art Museum) (Zwolle, 2001), 175, no. 40, for Sorgh’s
portrait of the Amsterdam Bierens family, which features a similar fireplace in the background.
2. Clotilde Brière-Misme, “Un ‘Intimiste’ hollandais, Jacob Vrel,” Revue de l’Art Ancien etModerne 68 (June–December 1935): 165. For a transcription of the inventory, see Adolf
Berger,“Inventar

deKunstsammlungendesErzherzogs

Leopold

WilhelmvonÖsterreich,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 1,
part 2 (1883): CL, no. 739, “hollandischer Camin, darbey ein kranckhe Fraw sitczt.”
3. See Gerlinde Gruber, “Das Bilderverzeichnis der Pressburger Burg von 1781: Ein Beitrag zur
Sammlungsgeschichte der Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums,” Jahrbuch desKunsthistorischen Museums Wien 8, no. 9 (2006–7): 378, no. 106. In the inventory ofEmperor Joseph II, dated 19 February 1781, the painting was listed as no. 106, “ein Frau am
Camin sitzend,” making no reference to her being sick. When the painting was sold at auction
at Sotheby’s, Amsterdam on 18 May 2004 as no. 14, it was entitled “An Interior with a
Woman Sleeping Near a Fireplace Together with a Cat and a Dog.” Since the woman’s eyes
are half open and she is resting against a pillow, it appears that she is indeed sick, and not
sleeping.
4. Adolf Berger, “Inventar de Kunstsammlungen des Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm vonÖsterreich,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 1,
part 2 (1883): CL, no. 739. The full citation is as follows: “Zwey Stückhel einer Grössen von?hlfarb auf Holcz, warin in einem ein hollandischer Camin, darbey ein kranckhe Fraw sitczt,
vnndt in dem andern ein Fraw zum Fenster hinauszschawet.”
5. For scholars who adopted Brière-Misme’s identification, see Peter C. Sutton, “Woman at a
Window,” in Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, ed. Peter C. Sutton (Exh.
cat. Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen;
London, Royal Academy of Arts) (Philadelphia, 1984), 353, under no. 123, fig. 2; andElizabeth Honig, “Looking in(to) Jacob Vrel,” Yale Journal of Criticism 3, no. 1 (1989): 49. Fora different opinion, see Quentin Buvelot, “Jacobus Vrel: Woman at a Window, Waving at aGirl, c. 1650,” in A Choice Collection: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings from the Frits
Lugt Collection, ed. Quentin Buvelot and Hans Buijs (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis)(Zwolle, 2002), 224, no. 5. The slightly larger measurements of the Vienna work prompted
Buvelot to propose as a more plausible pendant another Vrel painting equally as large as theVienna painting: Interior with a Woman by a Fireplace, in which a woman is leaning forward in© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace
Page 6 of 10a chair by a fireplace (oil on panel, 65 x 48 cm, Brod Gallery, London, formerly sale,
Christie’s, 10 July 1998, no. 30, reproduced in Michiel Kersten, “Pieter de Hooch and Delft
Genre Painting 1650–1675,” in Delftse Meesters. Tijdgenoten van Vermeer: een andere kijk
op perspectief, licht en ruimte, ed. Michiel Kersten and Daniëlle Lokin [Exh. cat. Delft,
Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof] [Zwolle, 1996], 179, fig. 176). Although the interior with thewindows corresponds to the Vienna painting, the woman’s posture suggests tiredness orcontemplation rather than sickness.
6. Clotilde Brière-Misme, “Un ‘Intimiste’ hollandais, Jacob Vrel,” Revue de l’Art Ancien etModerne 68 (June–December 1935): 165.
7. See also Annette Rupprecht’s Technical Summary.
8. The old photograph is preserved on an RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) photo mount, a copy of which is on file atthe Leiden Collection, New York. The photo mount records the painting as having been withart dealer Van Diemen & Co. in Berlin in 1928, as well as Schaeffer in 1929. Since Schaeffer
published the painting in 1929 in its reduced state, it is likely that the photograph in its
extended state was provided by Van Diemen & Co in 1928. See Die Meister desHolländischen Interieurs (Exh. cat. Berlin, Galerie Dr. Schaeffer) (Berlin, 1929), 35, no. 105.
In that same year, the painting was published in its reduced state in an additional threepublications: Wilhelm R. Valentiner, “Dutch Genre Painters in the Manner of Pieter de Hooch.
Jacobus Vrel,” Art in America 17, no. 2 (1929): 88, fig. 3; Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Pieter deHooch (Stuttgart, 1929), 203; and Alfred Scharf, “Die Meister des Holländischen
Interieurs,” Der Cicerone 21 (April 1929): 225.
9. Many thanks to Elke Oberthaler, head of conservation at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in
Vienna, for sharing information on and a photograph of the reverse of the Vienna panel.
Thanks to Annette Rupprecht, who compared the reverses and concluded that both panels
have distinctly shaped bevels at the bottom and have similar mechanical tool marks. Also, thetraces around the vertical join in the Leiden Collection panel could well be of a fabric strip
comparable to the one that is still present in the Vienna work. Thanks also to Mariska deJonge at the Fondation Custodia in Paris for sending an image of the reverse of the early Vrelof ca. 1650 in their collection (see Quentin Buvelot, “Jacobus Vrel: Woman at a Window,
Waving at a Girl, c. 1650,” in A Choice Collection: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings fromthe Frits Lugt Collection, ed. Quentin Buvelot and Hans Buijs [Exh. cat. The Hague,
Mauritshuis] [Zwolle, 2002], 182–85). Although the Paris panel is cradled, it does not seem as
though it contains the same characteristics as the panels in Vienna and New York.
10. For a discussion of David Teniers the Younger’s time as Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s
curator between 1650–56, see Hans Vlieghe, David Teniers The Younger (1610–1690): A
Biography (Turnhout, 2011), esp. 29–45. It is likely that Teniers was the one who actively
acquired genre paintings, since the archduke favored Flemish history painting (see also
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace
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Vrel’s biography by Piet Bakker in this catalogue for this observation).
11. Several old photo mounts preserved at the RKD (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) in The Hague mention this piece of paperwith the signature and date hanging from a nail on the fireplace. It is also possible that thepiece of paper was hanging from another nail at the top of the chimney in the part of the panelthat was removed. Alternatively, the reference on the RKD (Rijksbureau voor
Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) mount might also be
erroneous, since Vrel uses the optical effect of a nail casting a shadow on a bare wall in otherpaintings, too. See Quentin Buvelot, “Jacobus Vrel: Woman at a Window, Waving at a Girl,ca. 1650,” in A Choice Collection: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings from the Frits Lugt
Collection, ed. Quentin Buvelot and Hans Buijs (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis) (Zwolle,
2002), 182–85, for his discussion of Vrel’s Woman at a Window, Waving at a Girl in the
Fondation Custodia in Paris, in which Vrel included a similar nail on a bare surface andsigned the composition on a piece of paper lying on the floor.
12. See Gerlinde Gruber, “Das Bilderverzeichnis der Pressburger Burg von 1781: Ein Beitrag zur
Sammlungsgeschichte der Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums,” Jahrbuch desKunsthistorischen Museums Wien 8, no. 9 (2006–7): 354–400.
13. See Peter C. Sutton, “Woman at a Window,” in Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre
Painting, ed. Peter C. Sutton (Exh. cat. Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Berlin,
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen; London, Royal Academy of Arts) (Philadelphia, 1984),
353.
14. See Piet Bakker’s biography on Vrel in this catalogue.
15. Thanks to Femke Diercks, junior curator of glass and ceramics at the Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, for sharing her insights regarding the earthenware, e-mail communication,
February 2014. The plates Vrel depicts, and which feature in many of his other interior
scenes, are of a relatively low quality. Their “spider-like” decorations on the edges point toPortuguese faience, a type of inexpensive earthenware loosely based on Chinese porcelain.

Provenance
Probably Leopold Wilhelm, Archduke of Austria, by 1659 (as pendant to the 1654 Woman
Looking Out of a Window in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. 6081).
Probably Emperor Joseph II, Vienna, by 1781; sold in Budapest in 1856.
[Van Diemen & Co, Berlin, ca. 1928; Galerie Dr. Schaeffer, Berlin, by 1929–at least 1932].
Dr. Liebermann, Berlin, by 1935.
Mrs M. van Es-Dirksen, The Hague, by 1936.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Private collection, the Netherlands (sale, Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 18 May 2004, no. 14;[Johnny van Haeften, Ltd., London]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2005.

Exhibition History
Berlin, Galerie Dr. Schaeffer, “Die Meister des Holländischen Interieurs,” April–May 1929, no.
105 [lent by Galerie Dr. Schaeffer, Berlin].
The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, “Oude Kunst uit Haagsch Bezit,” 12 December 1936–31
January 1937, no. 206 [lent by Mrs. M. van Es-Dirksen, The Hague].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The
Leiden Collection,” 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].
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 present
owner].
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].

References
Berger, Adolf. “Inventar de Kunstsammlungen des Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm vonÖsterreich.” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 1,
part 2 (1883): CL, no. 739.
Valentiner, Wilhelm R. “Dutch Genre Painters in the Manner of Pieter de Hooch. Jacobus
Vrel.” Art in America 17, no. 2 (1929): 88, fig. 3.
Valentiner, Wilhelm R. Pieter de Hooch. Stuttgart, 1929, 203.
Galerie Dr. Schaeffer. Die Meister des Holländischen Interieurs. Exh. cat. Berlin, Galerie Dr.
Schaeffer. Berlin, 1929, 35, no. 105.
Scharf, Alfred. “Die Meister des Holländischen Interieurs.” Der Cicerone 21 (April 1929): 225.
Brière-Misme, Clotilde. “Un ‘Intimiste’ hollandais, Jacob Vrel.” Revue de l’Art Ancien et© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace
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Moderne 68 (June–December 1935): 165, 167, fig. 12.
Gemeentemuseum. Oude Kunst uit Haagsch Bezit. Exh. cat. The Hague, Gemeentemuseum.
The Hague, 1937, 47, no. 206.
Sutton, Peter C. “Woman at a Window.” In Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre
Painting. Edited by Peter C. Sutton. Exh. cat. Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art;
Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen; London, Royal Academy of Arts. Philadelphia,
1984, 353, under no. 123, fig. 2.
Honig, Elizabeth. “Looking in(to) Jacob Vrel.” Yale Journal of Criticism 3, no. 1 (1989): 49.
Buvelot, Quentin. “Jacobus Vrel: Woman at a Window, Waving at a Girl, c. 1650.” In A Choice
Collection: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings from the Frits Lugt Collection. Edited by
Quentin Buvelot and Hans Buijs, 224, no. 5. Exh. cat. The Hague, Royal Cabinet of Paintings
Mauritshuis. Zwolle, 2002.
Gruber, Gerlinde. “Das Bilderverzeichnis der Pressburger Burg von 1781: Ein Beitrag zur
Sammlungsgeschichte der Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums.” Jahrbuch desKunsthistorischen Museums Wien 8, no. 9 (2006–2007): 378, no. 106.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace.” In Rembrandt and His
Time: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 136–7; 186,
no. 58. 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, 136–37.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Interior with a Sick Woman by a Fireplace.” In The Age of Rembrandt
and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova.
Translated by Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina, 76–77; 232, no. 5. Exh. cat. Moscow, The
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Moscow,
2018.

Technical Summary
The support, a rectangular composite panel comprising two vertically grained oak planks of similar
widths, has a small triangular wood insert along the lower right corner.[1] The panel is unthinned
and uncradled, has machine tool marks on both planks and a bevel along the center of the lower
edge only. Short vertical chips across the width of the upper edge reverse suggests it may havebeen trimmed. There are embossed initials, a black stencil, two numerical inscriptions, and four
paper labels, but no wax collection seals or import stamps.
A light-colored, radio-opaque ground appears to have been applied as a paste with a palette© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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knife. The paint has been applied smoothly in thin layers of transparent glazing with no use of
impasto through much of the composition, which allows the light-colored ground to show throughalong the figure’s white apron, wooden floor, and fireplace tiles.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
Infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers suggest there may be a line underdrawing
along the figure’s garment folds and the pillow. Further investigation with wavelengths thatpenetrate further into the infrared region may reveal a more extensive underdrawing. A
compositional change visible in the images and as a pentimento suggests the pillow the figureleans against was reduced in size along the upper and left sides. A long, narrow, slightly curved,
diagonal form, which extends from the hearth to the top of the figure’s head, may relate to theground application or indicate an additional compositional change.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition and remains in agood state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only. The triangular woodinsert measures 0.7 cm H x 0.5 cm W.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection