Card Players

ca. 1625

Jan Lievens(Leiden 1607 – 1674 Amsterdam)oil on canvas
97.5 x 105.4 cm
signed with initials in dark paint, upper left: “I.L.”
JL-102Currently on view at: The National Museum ofChina, Beijing© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Card Players
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How To Cite
DeWitt, Lloyd and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. "Card Players." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited byArthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
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© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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To judge from the chalk marks on the back wall, each indicating a drink

Comparative Figuresordered from the innkeeper, it has been a long night of gambling and, tothe intent pleasure of the kibitzers crowding the table, the stakes andtensions have clearly risen with every card the two soldiers have played.[1]Jan Lievens’s painting, however, is not so much about the game itself asabout the expressions on the protagonists’ faces at that dramatic moment
when one of the players must deal with the sudden realization that he haslost. Holding his five of hearts loosely in his hand, the vanquished gambler
stares in disbelief at the ace of hearts triumphantly held aloft by hishelmeted opponent. Even if it were not for the obvious juxtaposition of theFig 1. Workshop of Gerrit vanHonthorst, The Card Players,
1624, oil on canvas, 125 x 190
cm, Gemäldegalerie, Wiesbaden,
M 409

winning and losing cards or the intent gazes of this companions as theymeasure his reaction, the soldier’s body language and downward
expression would be enough to tell the story.
This dramatic painting from the beginning of Lievens’s career
demonstrates how thoroughly the young Leiden artist internalized thethematic and compositional innovations of the Utrecht Caravaggisti fromthe early 1620s. When Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656) returned toUtrecht in 1620, he brought with him an artistic repertoire that featured

Fig 2. Dirck van Baburen, TheMocking of Christ, ca. 1622, oil oncanvas, 106 x 136 cm, Museum
Catharijnconvent, Utrecht

depictions of card and backgammon players huddled around atable.[2] Honthorst’s compositions were tightly cropped, with the viewer
inevitably situated close to the action, peering into the game over theshoulder of one of the players. Gambling is a night sport, where passions
and foolish behavior are allowed their full range, their limits decided onlyby the size of the gamblers’ purses. In his now-lost Card Cheats, known
today only from a workshop replica (fig 1), Honthorst exploited thedarkness of the surroundings to unite the action, as light from a lantern inthe middle of the table brightly illuminates the faces of the players and theircohorts, including that of the silhouetted gambler whose arm hides the lightFig 3. Jan Lievens, Tric Trac
Players, ca. 1623, oil on canvas,
100 x 105 cm, Spier Collection,London

source.
Not surprisingly, prior to the discovery of the monogram IL, Lievens’s
painting was attributed to Honthorst.[3] The close compositional similarities
to Honthorst’s gambling paintings, however, also reveal significant
differences in Lievens’s figure types and body language, not to mention
brushwork, that help distinguish the work of the two artists. Lievens’s
gamblers are a coarser, lower-class group than Honthorst’s card cheats.
They sit in an extremely tight circle, their forms more tightly compressed
and restrained than those in Honthorst’s painting, with the result that the© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Card Players
Page 4 of 9figures’ facial expressions rather than their gestures become the painting’s
focus. Lievens’s bold brushwork, rough and unmodulated, and totally inkeeping with the character of the players seated at the table, also differsfrom Honthorst’s smooth and elegant manner of painting. Finally, as ischaracteristic of other early genre scenes by the artist, Lievens seems tooffer no moral judgment on the action of the card players. Whereas
Honthorst followed a long iconographic tradition by emphasizing thedeceitfulness and moral corruption of the game, Lievens departs entirely
from such a narrative. His gamblers are involved in a game of chance, andthe challenge he set for himself was to capture the emotions at themoment of truth.

Fig 4. Jan Lievens, An Old Man
Holding a Skull, ca. 1630, oil onpanel, 61.6 x 48.3 cm, private
collection

Honthorst was not the only artist among the Utrecht Caravaggisti whotightly cropped his compositions in the early 1620s, so also did Dirck van
Baburen (ca. 1595–1624), as seen in The Mocking of Christ from ca. 1622
(fig 2). Lievens must have known Van Baburen’s painting, for he based
the figure of the silhouetted card player on the helmeted soldier in thelatter’s work. Lievens probably also responded to the aggressive
chiaroscuro effects in Van Baburen’s paintings and the rugged physicalityof his figures.
Lievens may have painted Card Players as a pendant to another gambling
scene, Tric Trac Players (fig 3), for the two works have virtually the same
dimensions, a similar compositional focus, are both painted on canvas,
and date from the early to mid-1620s.[4] Nevertheless, as Bernhard
Schnackenburg has noted, Card Players is compositionally moresophisticated than is Tric Trac Players and is painted in a far bolder, moreassured technique.[5] These stylistic differences, which suggest that thetwo works were painted sequentially, demonstrate how rapidly Lievens
matured as an artist during these years.
Lievens’s Card Players belongs to a genre of guardroom and tavern
scenes of soldiers that only developed in the 1620s. In an era racked byconflict, the presence of soldiers in the Netherlands was nearly constant,especially after the resumption of hostilities with Spain upon thetermination of the Twelve-Year Truce in 1621. These men were mainly
foreign mercenaries whose daily lives swung between periods of violenceand boredom. Many lived an unanchored existence, a great deal of it
passed in the demimonde of taverns and low company. Dutch genre© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Card Players
Page 5 of 9paintings often concerned themselves with moral boundaries, andbecause scenes of soldiers often included depictions of gambling,indolence, prostitution, drunkenness, and other activities that transgressed
these limits, they were very effective in holding the public’s interest.[6]Lievens did not paint real soldiers or depict an actual situation, but rather
dressed up local models to take on roles in this small human drama. Forexample, the man at the right also appears in Tric Trac Players (fig 3) andin Lievens’s An Old Man Holding a Skull , ca. 1630 (fig 4). Jan Jansz.
Orlers, the Leiden burgomaster, historian, and art lover who wrote about
Lievens in his 1641 history of Leiden, owned this latter painting.[7] In the1640 inventory of his possessions the painting is described as “the keeperof the Almshouse with a Skull in his hand.”[8] Two archival documents
reveal that in 1629 and 1631 the financial officer (rentmeester) of the Sint
Catharina Gasthuys in Leiden was named Jan van Heussen, who resided
in the Rijn district of town, where both Lievens and Rembrandt van Rijn
(1606–69) lived.[9] This model also sat for other Leiden artists, among
them an anonymous artist who painted Elderly Man in the Leiden
Collection (GD-109), and Rembrandt, in his Old Man in a Fur Cap (Tiroler
Landesmuseum, Innsbruck).[10]Young painters also used fellow artists and friends as models to save theexpense of hiring professionals. The young man with the pipe in the centerof Card Players is likely Rembrandt, who posed for Lievens a number oftimes, as in a portrait of ca. 1629 (private collection, on loan toRijksmuseum, Amsterdam).[11] Lievens, in turn, appeared in several of
Rembrandt’s early works, as in Three Musicians (Allegory of Hearing), ca.
1624, in the Leiden Collection (RR-105). Rembrandt and Lievens would
develop an artistic friendship and rivalry in which they forged a radicallynew style whose realism and drama are already evident in this work.
- Lloyd DeWitt and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Card Players
Page 6 of 9Endnotes
1. This entry is based, in large part, on the one that appears in Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed.,JanLievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (NewHaven, 2008), 86–87, no. 3.
2. Richard J. Judson and Rudolf E. O. Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, 1592–1656 (Doornspijk,1999), 17–19.
3. On the reverse of the painting is a label with the name “Van Honthorst.” The first art
historians to recognize the correct attribution were B. J. A. Renckens and R. E. O. Ekkart in1976 (letter to the then owner). See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., Jan Lievens: A Dutch
Master Rediscovered (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee,Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008),
289 n. 2.
4. John Twilley, “Interim Thread Count Report” (2009) of The Card Players Study Day, The
Leiden Collection, New York, July 9, 2010, notes that the canvas in Card Players has amore regular weave than does that of Tric Trac Players.
5. Bernhard Schnackenburg, in the entry on the painting in the auction catalogue (Sotheby’s,Amsterdam, May 8, 2007, lot 77).
6. Jochai Rosen, Soldiers at Leisure: The Guardroom Scene in Dutch Genre Painting of theGolden Age (Amsterdam, 2010), 78, n. 15.
7. For Orlers and Lievens, see Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. in Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master
Rediscovered (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee ArtMuseum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 5.
8. “De Coster van het Gasthuys met een Dootshooft inden arm.” See: R. E. O. Ekkart and M. L.
Wurfbain, eds., Geschildert tot Leyden anno 1626 (exh. cat., Leiden, Stedelijk Museum deLakenhal) (Leiden, 1976), 18; Meredith Hale in Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered ,ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee,
Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008),
124, 290 nn. 7 and 8. See also sale catalogue, Christies, London, 6 December 2007, lot7446.
9. For Van Heussen as rentmeester, see the inventory of the Sint Catharinagasthuys,
Regionaal Archief Leiden, Gasthuizen, arch. 504, inv. I.1.3.26 and 27. For further information
on Van Heussen, see Henriette Rahusen’s entry on Leiden School, Elderly Man (GD-109).
10. See Meredith Hale in Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered , ed. Arthur K. Wheelock
Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum;© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 290 n. 7.
11. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., ed., Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered (Exh. cat.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam,Museum Het Rembrandthuis) (New Haven, 2008), 114–15, no. 17, ill.

ProvenanceOvide Ghislain (died 1944), Jemappes, Belgium, by 1927; by descent to his grandchild,Belgium (sale, Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 8 May 2007, no. 77 [to Johnny van Haeften, Ltd.,London]). 1[1]From whom acquired by the present owner in 2007.

Provenance Notes

1. Card Players was in Ghislain’s collection when it was first recorded in a certificate dated 3October 1927. In that certificate, René Tonus of Brussels authenticated the painting as byGerrit van Honthorst; Lievens’s initials were by then covered with dirt and old varnish.
Ghislain was killed by Nazi forces in 1944, but the painting was retained by his survivingfamily. In 1976, B. J. A. Renckens of the RKD and R. E. O. Ekkart correctly identified thework as by Lievens, after correspondence with Ghislain’s descendant.

Exhibition History
Washington, National Gallery of Art, “Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered,” 26October 2008–11 January 2009; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum, 7 February–26 April
2009; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, 17 May–9 August 2009, no. 3 [lent by thepresent owner].
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, August 2011–November 2016 [lent by the presentowner].
Paris, Museé du Louvre, “Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt,”
22 February–22 May 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces of The Leiden© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Card Players
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References
Schnackenburg, Bernhard. “Jan Lievens und Pieter de Grebber.” Wallraf-RichartzJahrbuch 68 (2007): 194–99, figs. 13, 14, 15; 216 n. 57.
Wheelock Jr., Arthur K. “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master.” InJan Lievens:
A Dutch Master Rediscovered. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. Exh. cat. Washington D.C.,
National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het
Rembrandthuis. New Haven, 2008, 8, 11, 86–87, no. 3.
Coutre, Jacquelyn N. “Vanquishing the Shadow: Jan Lievens Comes to Light after 250Years.” Dutch Crossing 33 (October 2009): 135–51, no. 1.

Technical Summary
The support is composed of two pieces of medium-weight, plain-weave fabric with a lined
horizontal join near the center of the composition, just below the chins of all four figures.[1] All fourtacking margins have been removed, and there is cusping along all but the right edge. In 2009
the Thread Count Automation Project (TCAP) confirmed the support has been cut down along
the right edge and that the support’s regular-weave pattern indicates it belongs to the category
known as the “Vermeerian” type.[2] Repetitive horizontal creases suggest the support may havebeen previously rolled. There are no wax seals, canvas stamps, inscriptions, or labels along thelining or stretcher reverse.
A double ground, composed of an orange-brown lower layer lacking lead white followed by agray-green ground composed of earth pigments with some lead white, has been applied.
The paint has been applied in a confident manner with broad, bold strokes. The surface of thepainting has an overall smooth appearance with textured highlights, deliberately executed with
impasto and well-defined brushwork.
The profile of the soldier whose back is turned to the viewer was executed after the centralfigure, who may depict Rembrandt, as the central figure’s flesh tones are visible beneath the redbrown tones of the soldier’s face.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 900–1700 nanometers. The
images reveal minor compositional changes to the contour of the soldier’s proper left shoulder,which has been extended slightly with a lighter brown paint and lies on top of the chin of theadjacent figure on the left.
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The painting has been signed with initials in dark paint along the upper left but is undated.
The painting was cleaned, lined, and restored in 2007 and remains in a good state ofpreservation.[3]Technical Summary Endnotes

1. According to Devi Ormond’s 2013 examination report, it is unclear whether this is a seam
or a tear.
2. TCAP codirectors: C. Richard Johnson Jr. of Cornell University and Don H. Johnson ofRice University.
3. Entry based on 2013 examination report by Devi Ormond, Associate Paintings
Conservator, J. Paul Getty Museum.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection