Boy Offering Grapes to a Woman

ca. 1675–82

Attributed to Maria Schalcken

oil on panel
35.6 x 26.7 cm
signed, upper left: “Schalcken . F.”
GS-113© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Boy Offering Grapes to a Woman
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How To Cite
Jansen, Guido. "Boy Offering Grapes to a Woman." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur
K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
This page is available on the site's Archive. PDF of every version of this page is available on the Archive,
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© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Boy Offering Grapes to a Woman
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This painting, which has always been attributed to Godefridus Schalken

Comparative Figures(1643–1706), shows a young woman in sumptuous dress, sitting in front ofa red curtain and seen from the knees upward. In her left hand she holds aclosed fan, while reaching out with her right hand toward a bunch ofgrapes in a large wicker basket filled with white, red and blue bunches ofthis delicacy, which a boy offers her. In the right background is a view of awalled garden with an impressive fountain and tall trees, beyond whichhigh mountains rise. The signature “Schalcken . F” at the upper left
appears in a piece of blue sky where the curtain sags. Not only is this arather unusual place for Godefridus Schalcken to have put his signature,
but the absence of his first initial, G, is certainly uncommon.
A comparison of this painting with works considered typical of Schalcken
reveals additional anomalies. The detailing of the woman’s clothing andFig 1. Maria Schalcken, SelfPortrait at the Easel, 1662–99, oilon panel, 39.6 × 31.6 cm, Eijk andRose-Marie van Otterloo
Collection

particularly the wicker basket is somewhat hard and lacks the soft touch
we expect to see from this master. The anatomy of the boy’s head is notentirely correct, and a background landscape with a mountainous vista
appears nowhere else in Schalcken’s oeuvre. The painting therefore
seems to have been produced in Schalcken’s studio by a pupil or anassistant.
The attribution of the painting can be pinpointed more exactly thanks to thecapital F in the signature. This signature, as well as its placement, isidentical to that on Maria Schalcken’s Self-Portrait at the Easel, now in theVan Otterloo collection (fig 1).[1] Though Godefridus occasionally placed
an F after his name as an abbreviation for fecit, he did so using a small Slike letter.[2] On Self-Portrait at the Easel, not only did Maria sign her namein full, but she also wrote the same capital F we find on the presentpainting. The space in front of the signature on Boy Offering Grapes to aWoman is, moreover, large enough to have accommodated Maria’s
Christian name. Thus it is reasonable to assume that it was not
Godefridus, but rather Maria—his sister and pupil (and junior by severalyears)—who painted Boy Offering Grapes to a Woman , even if her
brushstrokes are somewhat broader and less accomplished than in her
Self-Portrait at the Easel. The absence of Maria’s Christian name in thesignature could then be blamed on a former owner, who evidently thought
it might prove more profitable to let it pass for a work by Godefridus.
Maria Schalcken presumably studied with her brother from 1665 to 1670,© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Boy Offering Grapes to a Woman
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after he had completed his training in Gerrit Dou’s studio and returned
from Leiden to Dordrecht, where he moved back in with his parents in theNieuwstraat (see GS-101).[3] She thus became Godefridus’s first pupil(see GS-106). A century and a half ago, her work had already been
described by Immerzeel as rare.[4] Her painting career cannot have lasted
very long, and she would never have had to paint for a living. It is likely thatafter her marriage in 1682 to the Dordrecht merchant Severijn van Bracht(b. 1658), she never touched her brushes again, because one year later
she gave birth to a daughter, Anna, and in 1685 to a son, Cornelis.[5] VanBracht had his banns read again in July 1700, so by then he must havebeen a widower and Maria must have died some time before that.
Therefore, Maria’s painting activities should be placed mainly in the1670s.[6]In addition to Self-Portrait at the Easel, there is one other known painting
by Maria’s hand, Interior with a Young Lady Seated, Powdering Her Hair ,a small panel documented in 1979 in the London art trade.[7] Furthermore,
there are a number of listings of paintings by her in old sale catalogues.
These refer to two genre pieces, Woman at Her Toilet, Eating Comfits(Een Vrouwtje dat voor haar Toilet sit Confituuren eetende) and Drunken
Woman and a Young Boy in a Room (Een dronk Wyf en een Jongetje ineen Vertreki), as well as the aforementioned Young Lady Seated.[8]-Guido Jansen© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Boy Offering Grapes to a Woman
Page 5 of 7Endnotes
1. Frederik Duparc, Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk
van Otterloo Collection (New Haven, 2011), 279–81, no. 57, with outdated biographicalinformation. For a more up-to-date biography of Maria, see the online note by Marloes
Huiskamp.
2. Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris, 1988), nos. 104, 130, 131, and 149.
According to Beherman, the signature on his no. 4, the Holy Family in Frankfurt, is followed
by a capital F, but illustration no. 457 in Mirjam Neumeister, Holländische Gemälde imStädel 1550–1800: Künstler geboren nach 1630 (Petersburg, 2010), 3:408, shows it to be alowercase

F.

Accordingto

theRKD(Rijksbureau

voor

Kunsthistorische

Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) website, Schalcken’s Self-Portrait, nowin

theDordrechtsMuseum(RKD(Rijksbureauvoor

Kunsthistorische

Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) kunstwerkno. 13042), bears a capital F,
but in this case, too, Schalcken in fact used the small s-like letter F. As far as I could
discover, these are the only instances in which Schalcken signed his work with an F after hisname.
3. Cornelis Schalcken (1610–74) and Aletta Lydius (1612–after 1674) married in Heusden in
1636 and would have eight children: Balthasar (1637–79), Anna (1638–80), Godefridus(1643–1706), Maria (ca. 1645–before 1700), Cornelis (ca. 1650–1709), Aletta (1654–1700),
Barbara (ca. 1655–1709), and Johannes (1660–1724).
4. Johannes Immerzeel, De levens en werken der hollandsche en vlaamschkunstschilders,
beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters, van het begin der vijftiende eeuw tot heden…
(Amsterdam, 1842–43), 3:59.
5. Maria and Severijn had their banns read on 26 July 1682, which means that the marriage
must have taken place several weeks later. Gemeentearchief Dordrecht (now the RegionaalArchief Dordrecht), ONA 20.243 (unnumbered). This date is not provided in the online noteby Marloes Huiskamp.
6. Professor Peter Klein, who subjected the current painting to dendrochronologicalexamination in July 2012, came to the conclusion that “an earliest felling date can be derived
for the year 1640. . . . With a minimum of 2 years for seasoning an earliest creation of thepainting is possible from 1642 upwards. Under the assumption of a median of 17 sapwood
rings and 2 years for seasoning a creation is plausible from 1652 upwards.” Apparently it
was more than 20 years before the panel was actually put to use.
7. Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris, 1988), 47 (ill.). Trafalgar Galleries, TrafalgarGalleries at the Royal Academy, vol. 2 (London, 1979), 46–47, with color illustration; oil onpanel, 36.2 x 26.2 cm. The work is signed in full “Maria . Schalcken . F .” in the lower left© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Boy Offering Grapes to a Woman
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hand corner, exactly as on her Self-Portrait.
8. The woman eating comfits (oil on panel, approx. 50 x 40 cm) was first recorded at the sale inThe Hague of the collection of Seger Tierens, 23 July 1743 (lot 167); on 21 May 1790 thepiece was put up for auction again in The Hague (lot 165); RKD (Rijksbureau voor
Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) excerpts nos. 1483885
and 1483896. The drunken woman on a panel of approximately the same dimensions firstsurfaced at the sale on 7 November 1768 in Dordrecht (lot 7) and was later included in thesale of the Cornelis van Heemskerck collection, which was held on 18 November 1783 inThe Hague (lot 13). It subsequently belonged to the Jacques Bergeon collection, which wasauctioned off on 4 November 1789 in The Hague (lot 59); RKD (Rijksbureau voor
Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History) excerpts nos. 1483891,1483894, and 1483892, all with much more detailed descriptions of the painting than theone given in the 1768 catalogue. The portrait of a young girl (oil on panel, 28 x 21 cm) waspart of the collection of Count F. de Robiano, which was sold in Brussels on 1 May 1837 (lot594). The same painting was described in detail in July 1922 by Hofstede de Groot, whoalso noted that an attempt had been made to pass it off as the work of Godefridus; RKD(Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Institute for Art History)
excerpts nos. 1483888 and 1483895.

ProvenancePossibly Arthur Kay, Glasgow (his sale, Christie’s, London, 11 May 1911, no. 224 [to Roosfor £12, 12 s.], as by Godefridus Schalcken).1[1]Private collection.
(Sale, Sotheby’s, Monaco, 2 December 1989, no. 319, [for 721,500 francs] as by Godefridus
Schalcken [Richard Green Fine Paintings, London, 1992]; sale, Christie’s, London, 23 April
1993, no. 8, as by Godefridus Schalcken).
Dr. Hinrich Bischoff, Bremen and Berlin, until 2005, as by Godefridus Schalcken [onconsignment with Galerie Heide Hübner, Würzburg, June 1993–March 1994; onconsignment with Klaus Edel, Cologne and London, 1995]; (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 15June 2006, as by Godefridus Schalcken).
From whom acquired by the present owner.

Provenance Notes© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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1. The sale of Arthur Kay’s collection in 1911 included A Boy and Girl, with a Dish of Fruit ,oil on canvas, 41.9 x 33 cm. Hofstede de Groot subsequently included this listing in his entry.
However, the Leiden Collection work is on panel and measures 35.6 x 26.7 cm. It is possiblethat the Arthur Kay painting represents an unknown prototype or variant by Godefridus
Schalcken.

References
Possibly Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most
Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith . 8vols. London, 1907–27, 5:358, no. 169a, as by Godefridus Schalcken. Translated from
Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen
Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Hübner, Heide. “Junge Frau mit Pagen.” In Alte Meister: Old Master Paintings; Kunsthandel
Heide Hübner. Sales cat. Galerie Heide Hübner, Würzburg, 1993, 18–19, as by Godefridus
Schalcken.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection