Fisherman and His Wife in an Interior
Quiringh van Brekelenkam(Zwammerdam? 1622 – ca. 1669 Leiden)

1657
oil on panel
47 x 60.3 cm
signed and dated in brown paint along lower edge,
right of center: “Q. Brekelenkam__ .1657”
QB-100© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Fisherman and His Wife in an Interior
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How to cite
Henel, Jennifer E. “Fisherman and His Wife in an Interior” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited byArthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/(archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

Illuminated by light streaming from an open window into a simple room with an

Comparative Figures

earthenware floor, a fisherman descales a pail full of herring under the watchful eyesof his wife who stands, hands on hips, before the couple’s box bed. To their right sitsa simple meal of bread, cheese, and a beverage in an earthenware pitcher. A cooking
pot hangs in the hearth at the far right of this cozy interior. When Quiringh vanBrekelenkam painted this work in 1657, he was already an established artist, having
joined the Guild of Saint Luke in 1648.[1] Although he frequently depicted artisanssuch as tailors and spinners in their workshops, in this instance he represented adomestic scene of a fisherman cleaning his catch while his wife waits patiently for
him to finish his task.
Van Brekelenkam’s paintings are stylistically less refined than those of histeacher Gerrit Dou (1613–75), which is more appropriate considering the social statusof his subjects. As an anonymous eighteenth-century author noted, “his brushwork

Fig 1. Quiringh van Brekelenkam, TheFishwife, 1666 (?), oil on panel, 50 x
39.7 cm, Museum der Bildenden
Künste, Leipzig, inv. 992

and treatment were loose and fluent, true to life, and of a benign nature, being a
disciple of Dou, whom he followed in a vague way.”[2] Van Brekelenkam painted fora less affluent art market than his master, with the hope that his domestic subject
matter would appeal to the burgeoning middle class in Leiden. Unfortunately, it
seems that his paintings did not command very high prices, which may have been one
cause for his persistent financial problems.
In this scene, Van Brekelenkam features the fisherman’s wife as the primary
caretaker and probably the dominant personality of the home.[3] Her character reflectsa well-known passage from the book of Proverbs: “the wife of noble character . . .
selects wool and flax and works with eager hand. She is like the merchant ships,bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for

Fig 2. Gabriel Metsu, The Vegetable
Market in Amsterdam (detail), ca.
1661–62, oil on canvas, Musée duLouvre, Paris, inv. 1460, photo: Franx
Raux, © RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Fisherman and His Wife in an Interior
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her family and portions for her servant girls” (Prov. 31:13–15). As she waits for herhusband to prepare the fish, it is evident that she has prepared the simple meal ofbread and cheese and that her house is in clean condition and good order. It is unclear
whether all the fish is meant for their own consumption. The wife may also have arole in selling the fish at market. Van Brekelenkam suggests this role through her
assertive stance as she gazes at her husband with hands on her hips. Ten years later,
Van Brekelenkam depicted a fishmonger at market in a similar fashion (fig 1).
Gabriel Metsu (1629–67) also used this body language in the confrontational
exchange between two female merchants in his painting The Vegetable Market inAmsterdam, which he executed in the early 1660s (fig 2).
Although Van Brekelenkam painted for a largely middle-class market in the 1650s,
he sought to expand his clientele in the 1660s by painting upper-class scenes in amore refined style, similar to those being painted by Dou, Metsu, and Frans van
Mieris (1635–81). For example, Sentimental Conversation of the early 1660s (fig 3)
displays Van Brekelenkam’s ability to depict fine fabrics in both the gentleman’s
jerkin and the fur-trimmed jacket of his elegant companion. Despite their thematicand stylistic differences, Sentimental Conversation and Fisherman and His Wife in an
Interior exhibit the same sensitivity to rendering the dynamic relationships between
figures and to capturing light effects in interior settings.

Fig 3. Quiringh van Brekelenkam,
Sentimental Conversation, early 1660s,
oil on panel, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, The
Friedsam Collection, Bequest ofMichael Friedsam, 1931,
32.100.19, www.metmuseum.org- Jennifer E. Henel, 2017

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Fisherman and His Wife in an Interior
Page 4 of 5Endnotes
1. See Van Brekelenkam’s biography in this catalogue; and Elizabeth Alice Honig, “Brekelenkam,Quiringh van,” Grove Art Online: Oxford Art Online, accessed 5 April 2014.
2. As translated by Angelika Lassius, Quiringh van Brekelenkam (Doornspijk, 1992), 10–11, and cited infootnote 13, Adversaria Liedsche Schilders (18th-century notes, anonymous author), Gemeentearchief,Leiden.
3. He depicted the wife of a fisherman in much the same pose in another painting dated ten years later. SeeQuiringh van Brekelenkam, Kitchen Interior with Two Figures, 1667, oil on panel, Musée J.-P. Pescatore,Luxembourg, inv. 52.

Provenance
Willem Smits et al. (sale, The Hague, 18 May 1785, lot 79 [J. D. Nijman]).
Frederik Willem Greebe (sale, Amsterdam, 8 December 1788, no. 23).
Gerrit Muller (sale, Amsterdam, 2 April 1827, no. 11).
Private collection, Philadelphia, until 1930, [W. E. Duits Ltd., London, 1930].
Private collection, Belgium, 1930–95 [Johnny van Haeften, London (sale, Maastrict, 1995)].
Private collection, Boston [Salomon Lilian, Amsterdam, by 2005].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2005.

Exhibition History
Ithaca, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, “An Eye For Detail: Dutch Painting
From The Leiden Collection,” September 2014–May 2015 [lent by the present owner].

References
Havard, Henry. “Quiringh Brekelenkam.” In L’Art et Les Artistes Hollandais. 4 vols. Paris, 1881, 4: 118,
as ‘Le Vieux Cuisinier.’
Lasius, Angelika, Quiringh van Brekelenkam. Doornspijk, 1992, 102–3, no. 79.
© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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Berry Drago, Elisabeth. Painted Alchemists: Early Modern Artistry and Experiment in the Work ofThomas Wijck. Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age. Amsterdam, 2019, 119–20, fig. 3.10.

Technical Summary
The support is a rectangular-shaped composite panel comprised of two horizontally grained oakplanks.[1] The horizontal panel joint, about 5 cm above the lower edge, passes through the toe of the malefigure’s shoe. The panel has no bevels and has been thinned and cradled. A previously repaired horizontal
split, along the upper third of the composition, runs through the female figure’s shoulders. A small triangularwood insert has been applied to the lower left corner and a small notch has been cut in the lower rightcorner.[2] A numerical chalk inscription appears on the reverse, but there are no wax seals, stencils, importstamps, labels or panel maker’s marks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied, followed by paint applied in broad, fluid
brushstrokes with slightly blurred faces and strongly modeled folds in the clothing.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. The images and Xradiograph reveal a few minor compositional changes. From left to right: a horizontally oriented rectangularform originally depicted in the lower left corner is now obscured by the broom bristles; the leaded window
appears to have originally been shaped like a parallelogram, with parallel vertical sides (rather than thetrapezoid seen now); the round plate on the floor with the fish in the foreground was originally oval shaped;
and the woman’s proper left arm from shoulder to wrist was shifted to the left during the paint stage.
The painting is signed and dated in brown paint along lower edge, right of center: “Q. Brekelenkam__.1657.”
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition, although a repaired horizontal
split and the small triangular wood insert along the lower left edge indicate previous panelwork. The panel
remains in a good state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only.
2. The wood insert is ca. 0.6 cm H x 3.2 cm W.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection