DUCK, Jacob

This painting depicts a cavalier selling his goods, with an old man reading a document and a young boy holding a coin.

This painting is the earliest of several paintings by Duck featuring gypsy fortune-tellers. In this scene, setting in a tavern as indicated by the glass of red wine to the far left, and the smoking requisites dropped onto the floor, a woman in very proper attire responds skeptically to the words of an old gypsy fortune-teller. The lady’s companion wears an extravagantly feathered cap and an impatient expression.

Jacob Duck was one of the finest exponent of the kortegaard (guardroom) genre of Dutch painting that became popular in the first half of the seventeenth century. The present painting depicts a guardroom interior with a cavalier holding a coin, a courtesan sitting on his knee.

This signed painting is a characteristic example of Jacob Duck’s use of domestic scenes as a vehicle for social commentary. Duck modeled his style on Amsterdam artists such as Pieter Codde and Willem Duyster, concentrating on contemporary genre, particularly guardroom scenes (cortegaerdjes) such as this one.

The notary’s clearly rendered features, broad smile, and direct stare suggest that he is a protagonist in this scene. The elderly couple seated behind him, painted more loosely with a monochromatic palette, appears to be receiving money from the notary.

In this seemingly classic genre scene there are clear sexual connotations such as the exposed chest of the sleeping woman, and the ambivalent position of the standing woman’s hand.

Jacob Duck was a prominent artist in Utrecht whose career overlapped the local Caravaggist movement. His Dividing the Spoils depicts a scene of soldierly revelry of a type developed by Codde and Duyster. It was executed in a period in which Duck began to depict lofty, cavernous interiors as locales for soldiers’ barracks.

The genre of guardroom interiors (cortegaerdje) originated in the 1620’s in Amsterdam, where it enjoyed enormous popularity, its main exponents being Willem Cornelisz. Duyster and Pieter Codde. The latter’s studio produced a number of very accomplished practitioners in the genre, Jacob Duck amongst them. In this genre soldiers are depicted in the company of elegantly dressed ladies, often eating and drinking together in a highly social, merry setting.

Duck represents the guardroom tradition in Utrecht. He prefers large crowds gathered in spacious halls and exploits all the tricks known to artists of his time to create the illusion of space: curtains or large piles of weaponry in the foreground to set the front plane, an emphasis on the orthogonal lines made by the tiles or boards on the floor, vistas into rooms beyond the one in which the main action takes place, and aerial perspective. If mutual influence is a criterion, he was as unimpressed by the Utrecht follower of Caravaggio as they were by him. His subjects range from boorish episodes in taverns to a lovely picture of a woman ironing in a kitchen (Centraal Museum, Utrecht).

Concerning this painting in Budapest, although the soldiers are playing cards they are fully dressed, wearing hats and boots, their swords, breast-plates and banner in readiness beside them. The grey, undecorated walls of the guardroom suggest the discipline and boredom of their lives, the monotony of which can be relieved only by practice on the drum. The genre painters preferred not to show soldiers on guard - perhaps because they seemed ill at ease when performing this duty.

Jacob Duck was originally trained as a goldsmith, and began his studies as a painter with Cornelis Droochsloot at what was then the advanced age of twenty-one. At that time, painting in Utrecht was largely the domain of the Caravaggisti, but Duck took a different direction, modelling his style on the works of the Amsterdam artists Pieter Codde and Willem Duyster. He concentrated on contemporary genre scenes, particularly those of guardrooms and interiors with elegantly dressed figures, as visible in the present painting.

Although long considered a work of Gabriel Metsu, this painting, which depicts a brightly lit interior with gentleman presenting a snuff box to a lady stringing a pearl at a table draped in colourful fabrics, exemplifies Jacob Duck’s controlled style as well as his restrained yet striking palette.