© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Woman Plucking a Duck
School of Rembrandt van Rijn(–)

ca. 1645
oil on panel
99.8 x 73 cm
inscribed (incorrectly) in light-colored paint,
lower left corner: “816 Renbrant” (writtenwith “n” and no “d”); and lower right corner:“112.”
AD-100How to cite
Van Tuinen, Ilona. “Woman Plucking a Duck” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited by
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/a-woman-plucking-a-duck/(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.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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In a composition dominated by a warm palette of deep red, ochre, and brown

Comparative Figureshues, an old woman holds a dead duck above a wicker basket as she
carefully plucks the last few feathers off its bare belly. Peering throughspectacles perched on her nose, the woman’s squinting eyes, raised
eyebrows and slightly parted lips betray her total concentration as she
attempts to remove every feather from the duck’s body. To seventeenthcentury viewers, the woman’s care in properly preparing a meal would have
have been an exemplar of female domestic virtue.[1]Lying on the table in front of the woman is an exotic, white bird of paradise,
identifiable by its elegant tail with distinctive fine plumage, framed by two

Fig 1. Dirck de Bray, Still Life witha Hunting Sword and a Red Velvet
Cap Decorated with the Plumage
of a Bird of Paradise, 1672, oil on
panel, 37.5 x 25.1 cm, Private
Collection, England

black filamentary feathers. The red velvet beret next to its head foreshadows
the bird’s ornamental destination: the woman will soon attach the feathers to
the hat with a needle and thread—another reference to domesticity—to create
an elegantly adorned beret similar to one depicted by Dirck de Bray in 1672
(fig 1).[2] Against the wall at the right is a dead snipe that gracefully hangsover the edge of a round box covered by a white satin cloth. Suspended froman empty sconce on the wall above the snipe, to be tenderized before being
plucked and consumed, are a dead partridge and a chicken.[3] As much asthese four dead fowls present a glorious display of lush materials and various
colorful bird feathers, they are also a subtle reference to the woman’s old
age and the foreshadowing of her imminent end.[4]Although the painting is signed “Renbrant” [sic] in the lower left corner, thissignature is spurious and the artist of the work, who was probably associatedwith Rembrandt’s workshop, has not been identified.[5] This unknown masterFig 2. Attributed to School ofRembrandt, An Old Woman
Plucking a Duck, probably themid-1640s, oil on panel, 72.9 x
62.1 cm, The Michaelis Collection,
Cape Town, South Africa

used strong lighting to accentuate the chicken, the partridge and the snipe,
and painted these birds with much detail, particularly in the feathers, where
he added shimmering highlights in raised impasto. In contrast, he left the
woman and the bird of paradise in shadow, and executed their forms withmuted colors and broad brushstrokes. The subdued cream-colored hues
used in rendering the smooth, silky feathers of the bird of paradise arecomparable to the broad handling seen in the woman’s flowing scarf.
Another more tightly cropped version of this composition is in the Michaelis
Collection in Cape Town, where it is also attributed to the School ofRembrandt (fig 2). The relationship between these two works is unclear andFig 3. Rembrandt van Rijn, The
Toilet of Bathsheba, 1643, oil on
panel, 57.2 x 76.2 cm, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, Bequest of Benjamin Altman,
1913, inv.
14.40.651, www.metmuseum.org

probably cannot be determined with certainty until they are compared side byside. The few pentimenti in the Leiden Collection painting occur either inareas of the composition that fall outside the Cape Town version, or are too© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Woman Plucking a Duck
Page 4 of 9minor to indicate which of the two paintings is the primary version.[7] Werner
Sumowski considered the Cape Town painting to be of better quality than thepresent work.[8] Indeed, the execution of that work is more carefully renderedin many areas, specifically in the hair on the woman’s proper left temple, theornamental element on the woman’s upper sleeve, and the feathers of thetail of the bird of paradise, all of which suggests that the Cape Town work is
the primary version of this composition.
In the early twentieth century, both paintings were considered to be byRembrandt.[9] By the 1940s scholars recognized that although the generalcomposition, stark lighting, and figure type are reminiscent of Rembrandt, theexecution of neither work was by the master.[10] Attributions to a specificFig 4. Rembrandt van Rijn, Still
Life with Peacocks, ca. 1639, oilon canvas, 145 x 135.5 cm,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no.
SK-A-3981

artist in Rembrandt’s studio, including Abraham van Dyck (1635–72), Arent
de Gelder (1645–1727), Christopher Paudiss (1630–66), and Karel van derPluym (1625–72), however, have proven to be unconvincing.[11]Sumowski noted that the facial features and spectacles of the woman in thiscomposition are strikingly similar to those of the old servant in Rembrandt’s
1643 Toilet of Bathsheba (fig 3). On this basis, he proposed a dating of thepresent work to ca. 1645–50.[12] This dating corresponds with the results ofdendrochronological analysis, which reveal that the youngest year ring canbe dated to 1629. The panel, thus, could have been ready for use by around
1646. Another connection to Rembrandt’s work from this period is thearrangement of brightly lit dead birds in the foreground and a shaded figurein the background, which is reminiscent of Rembrandt’s 1639 Self-Portrait
with Dead Bittern[14] and his Still Life with Peacocks of ca. 1639 (fig 4).
Although we do not know who executed the present painting, it clearlyreflects the impact of Rembrandt’s manner in the mid-1640s.

- Ilona van Tuinen, 2017

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Endnotes

1. Compositions featuring young girls plucking birds, on the other hand, often contained sexual
allusions to the Dutch verb vogelen (a slang word for copulating). For a discussion of thesexual symbolism of a young woman plucking a duck in a painting of ca. 1655–56 in the
Philadelphia Museum of Art by Nicolaes Maes, see Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “Nicolaes Maes,
Woman Plucking a Duck,” in The Public and Private in the Age of Vermeer (Exh. cat. Osaka,
Osaka Municipal Museum of Art) (London, 2000), 132–35, no. 21. In this painting, objects
such as a shotgun (presumably of the girl’s suitor) and a wine pitcher and glass in the next
room enhance the sensual undertone of the girl’s act. In the present painting, however, there
are no such objects pointing to male company. For another painting featuring an old woman
plucking a duck, see Quentin Buvelot’s entry in the present catalogue on Frans van Mieris
the Elder’s Elderly Couple in an Interior, ca. 1650–55 (FM-100), in which the old woman’s
husband looks at the viewer as though to emphasize his wife’s domesticity.
2. The exotic bird of paradise, native to Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and accessible to the
Dutch via the Dutch East India Company, had long captured the imagination of artists, as issignified by a drawing by Joris Hoefnagel as early as ca. 1580 (watercolor and gouache onparchment set in gold leaf, 143 x 184 mm, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., inv. no.
1987.20.8.35), as well as a study by Rembrandt of two birds of paradise (pen in brown on
paper, ca. 1637, 181 x 154 mm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no. 1195). See also Joachim
Wolfgang von Moltke, Arent de Gelder, Dordrecht, 1645–1727 (Doornspijk, 1994), 185, no. R
68, where the present painting is erroneously identified as representing a taxidermist.
3. For the practice of hanging dead birds to allow the blood to flow out as a means to tenderize
the meat, as depicted in Rembrandt’s Still Life with Dead Peacocks of ca. 1639 (fig. 4 below),
see Ruud Priem, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art: Treasures from the
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, ed. Penelope Hunter-Stiebel (Exh. cat. Dayton, Dayton Art
Institute; Phoenix, Phoenix Art Museum; Portland, Portland Art Museum) (Seattle, 2006),
37–38, no. 14.
4. For the symbolism of dead birds in combination with old age, see Dominique Surh’s entry in
the present catalogue on Gerrit Dou’s Old Woman at a Niche by Candlelight, 1671 (GD-103),
in which a dead chicken lies in close proximity to an old woman.
5. See Technical Summary. It is unclear when this signature was added. The number “816”next to this signature is presumably an old inventory number, but it is unknown to whichcollection it refers.
6. See Hans Fransen, Michaelis Collection: The Old Town House, Cape Town—Catalogue of theCollection of Paintings and Drawings (Zwolle, 1996), 132. The painting does not include thespace above the woman’s head with the sconce, and has less space next to the woman’s© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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hands on the left and the hanging birds on the right. The conservation history of this painting
is unknown, and it is therefore not clear if the panel was cut. Bredius, in a letter to the keeperof the Michaelis Collection, dated 22 December 1937, mentioned a third version as well,though it is unknown where this version was at the time or is now. See also Joachim
Wolfgang von Moltke, Arent de Gelder, Dordrecht, 1645–1727 (Doornspijk, 1994), 185, no. R
68, who believed that one of these works was a copy of the other, but could not conclude
which was the original. Many thanks to Hayden Russell Proud, curator of the Michaelis
Collection, for sending a photograph of the Cape Town version. According to Mr. Proud, thepainting has developed matte areas and is scheduled to be examined by the paintings
conservator (correspondence, April 2014, copy on file at the Leiden Collection).
7. For a discussion of the pentimenti, see the Technical Summary.
8. Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols. (Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94),
4:2964, no. 1984. Sumowski does not give any reasons for this observation.
9. For an overview of the early attribution history of the Cape Town painting, which includes oral
or unpublished references to the Leiden Collection painting, see Hans Fransen, Michaelis
Collection: The Old Town House, Cape Town—Catalogue of the Collection of Paintings andDrawings (Zwolle, 1996), 132.
10. See Hans Fransen, Michaelis Collection: The Old Town House, Cape Town—Catalogue of theCollection of Paintings and Drawings (Zwolle, 1996), 132. Although Bredius attributed theCape Town painting to Rembrandt in a letter to the keeper of the Michaelis Collection in 1937,
he did not include it in his 1942 The Paintings of Rembrandt (London, 1942).
11. For the attribution history to the School of Rembrandt, see Werner Sumowski, Gemälde derRembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols. (Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94), 4:2964, no. 1984; Hans Fransen,
Michaelis Collection: The Old Town House, Cape Town—Catalogue of the Collection of
Paintings and Drawings (Zwolle, 1996), 132. The Cape Town painting bore an attribution to
Arent De Gelder in 1913. When the Leiden Collection painting was auctioned in 1972 and1977 at Sotheby’s London (see Provenance), it was attributed to De Gelder as well. De
Gelder, however, trained with Rembrandt in the early 1660s, later than when the paintings
were presumably executed. Moreover, De Gelder adopted Rembrandt’s late, patchy painting
style, which is not exemplified in these paintings. In 1994 Joachim Wolfgang von Moltke
definitively rejected the attributions to De Gelder, see Joachim Wolfgang von Moltke, Arent deGelder, Dordrecht, 1645–1727 (Doornspijk, 1994), 184–85, nos. R 67–68. The other threeartists mentioned were all in Rembrandt’s workshop in the 1640s (Van der Pluym around
1645, Paudiss around 1642, and Van Dyck around 1650), which fits better with the dating ofthese paintings. Of these artists, Paudiss comes closest in terms of figure types (which was
also noted by Sumowski), the delicate modeling, and the atmospheric lighting. See, forinstance, his Still Life with Cow Heads, dated 1658, and his Old Man with Fur Hat, dated
1654, both reproduced in Christopher Paudiss, 1630–1666, ed. Sylvia Hahn et al. (Exh. cat.
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Freising, Diözesanmuseum) (Regensburg, 2007), nos. 7 and 12. A close comparison
between these two paintings and the present work, however, shows that the handling of paintin the latter is overall smoother and the modeling less complex. The unpublished attribution to
Van Dyck pertains only to the New York painting and was recorded in a note of ca. 2006 in
The Leiden Collection curatorial files. In around 1660, Van Dyck painted Still Life with Hunting
Gear and a Dead Bittern, oil on canvas, 121 x 104.8 cm, signed “Av Dÿck” (Rafael Valls Ltd.,
London, 2000–1), with a similar attention to details in the feathers as in the present painting.
Van Dyck’s handling of paint, however, is rougher, with more impasto, making an attribution
to him unlikely. The author would like to thank Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. for sharing his thoughtson these matters of attribution.
12. See Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols. (Landau and Pfalz,
1983–45), 4:2964, no. 1984. For a discussion of The Toilet of Bathsheba, see Walter Liedtke,“The Toilet of Bathsheba,” in Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 vols. (NewHaven, 2007), 2: 613–23, no. 149. Liedtke points to the similarities between the servant
holding Bathsheba’s foot in the 1643 painting and Rembrandt’s earlier painting of the same
theme from ca. 1632, known only through copies. A copy of this early work is discussed in
Josua Bruyn, et. al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 2: 1631–1634 (The Hague, 1986),
591–94, no. C 45. The latter source also mentions the recurrence of the same model in
Rembrandt’s 1654 Bathsheba, now at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Whereas it is true thatthe servant in the 1643 painting bears general similarities to the servants in the paintings ofca. 1632 and 1654, her lorgnette and her facial features, especially the pronounced chin,correspond most with the Leiden Collection painting. This supports a dating of the latter work
to around the same time as the 1643 painting.
13. The painting was examined by Peter Klein at an unknown date, who concluded that the
youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1628, and that the panel could plausibly have been
ready for use from 1645 upwards, with a median of fifteen sapwood rings and two years forseasoning. The panel was also examined by Ian Tyers in November 2010, who concluded
that the youngest heartwood ring in the central plank is a sapwood ring that can be dated to1629. Tyers estimated a felling date between 1636 and 1652, based on the minimum andmaximum number of sapwood rings. Considering that Tyers identified a sapwood ring, which
was thus formed nearer the felling date than a regular-year ring, it is plausible that the fellingdate was nearer the minimum or median and not the maximum. It is reasonable to assume
that with a median of fifteen sapwood rings and two years for seasoning, the panel, according
to Tyers’s dating of the sapwood ring, could have been ready for use from 1646 onwards.
There are copies of both dendrochronological reports in the curatorial files at The Leiden
Collection.
14. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait with Dead Bittern, 1639, oil on panel, 89 x 121 cm, Gemäldegalerie
Alte Meister, Dresden.
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ProvenanceWilhelm II (1859–1941), the Last German Emperor and King of Prussia, before 1920 [HugoMoser, Aerdenhout, the Netherlands, 1926–38; Zuppinger, Herliberg, Switzerland, 1953–62;
Galerie Rudolf Beckers, Düsseldorf, Germany, 1964].
(Sale, Sotheby’s, London, 12 July 1972, no. 26, as by Aert de Gelder [to Arlington, for£3,200]; sale, Sotheby’s, London, 6 April 1977, no. 94, as by Aert de Gelder, [for £3,000]).
Private collection, Switzerland, by 1994 [Jack Kilgore & Co., New York, 2006 (as byRembrandt School)].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2006.

Exhibition History
Düsseldorf, Galerie Rudolf Beckers, “Special Exhibition of Fine Dutch, Flemish, German, andItalian Old Master Paintings,” 1964 (as by Aert de Gelder).

References
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler in vier Bänden. 6 vols. Landau andPfalz, 1983–94, 4:2964, no. 1984 (as by School of Rembrandt).
Von Moltke, Joachim Wolfgang. Arent de Gelder, Dordrecht, 1645–1727. Doornspijk, 1994,
185, no. R 68, fig. 97 (as by School of Rembrandt).
Fransen, Hans. Michaelis Collection: The Old Town House, Cape Town—Catalogue of theCollection of Paintings and Drawings. Zwolle, 1996, 132 (as by School of Rembrandt).

Versions
Versions and Copies

1. Attributed to School of Rembrandt, A Woman Plucking a Fowl, probably mid-1640s, oil on
panel, 72.9 x 62.1 cm, The Michaelis Collection, Capetown.
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Technical Summary
The support is a rectangular-shaped composite panel made up of three vertically grained Eastern
Baltic oak planks of similar widths, derived from a tree felled between 1636 and 1652.[1] The
composite panel is unthinned and uncradled and has bevels along all but the right vertical edge,
which may have been trimmed. A metal staple along the thickness of the lower panel edge
bridges the join between the center and right plank, and indicates previous panel work.[2] There
are mechanical toolmarks along the outer two planks and five import stamps, a stencil, a black
inscription and chalk, but no wax collection seals or panel maker’s marks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied and spills over onto the three edges
with bevels. The image was constructed with thin, smooth glazes through the background,allowing the ground to show through, with low impasto through the figure’s hands and face, andwith crisp delicate strokes of raised impasto defining the fine details of the four dead fowl, thewhite fabric, and the leaf draped over the box.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers.
Compositional changes evident in the images and as pentimenti indicate the edge of the whitefabric along the lower right corner was shortened and rounded off during the paint stage. Changes
were also made to the figure’s hat and shawl and to the left side of the figure’s profile from her
nose to beneath her chin. In addition, a pentimento along the back of the figure’s proper righthand and infrared images indicate that originally only the thumb, pointer and middle finger weredepicted; the ring finger and pinky were added later in the paint stage.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
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 Ian Tyers’s 2010 dendrochronology report. The
painting underwent previous dendrochronology by Peter Klein.
2. As viewed from the reverse.

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