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拍品專文
The Beit Adoration of the Shepherds is the outstanding religious painting in the oeuvre of the Haarlem painter Adriaen van Ostade. Combining the artist’s most refined technique with profound emotional subtlety, the picture has long been regarded as one of his masterpieces. The great German scholar and connoisseur Wilhelm von Bode observed in 1904 that: ‘In chiaroscuro, colouring, and execution, the picture is a masterpiece such as Ostade rarely succeeded in achieving’.
Painted in 1667, the Adoration demonstrates the shift that occurred during Ostade’s maturity, when he moved away from the raucous depictions of peasant revelry that had earned him fame, to offer more sympathetic and contemplative portrayals of humble life. Ostade very rarely addressed religious subjects and in doing so here, in his only known treatment of the theme, he arranges the nativity scene in a humble contemporary setting with a cast of modern day characters, presumably in an effort to communicate the story of Christ’s birth in a revitalising way to a contemporary protestant audience. The effect is startling.
The apparently simple setting of a ramshackle barn allows the painter to demonstrate the sheer breadth of his skills as a still-life painter, visible in his almost miniaturist rendering of the discarded shepherd staff in the foreground, the glistening water jug at the Virgin’s foot, the bread basket by her side and the harnesses hanging above Joseph’s head. A tonal winter twilight gently illuminates the scene. A group of six shepherds, harmoniously arranged around the cradle, remove their hats ceremoniously and kneel in front of the holy child. The truthful simplicity of their gestures reflects the sincerity of their devotion. Ostade shows the humble peasants with an expression of serene dignity as they become the first witnesses to the miraculous birth. Resting her head on her chin, the pose of the Virgin is reminiscent of that traditionally adopted by Melancholia after Albrecht Dürer’s invention. Despondent, she seems to meditate on the tragic fate that awaits her new-born son.
Ostade appears to have developed the composition from a related drawing attributed to his younger brother Isack (fig. 1; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade, Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, Hamburg, 1981, I, p. 192, no. 581/U; II, p. 247, no. 581/U). We know that Adriaen inherited his brother’s drawings after the latter’s premature death in 1649; it is quite plausible, then, that he made use of the sheet almost two decades later for this ambitious and unusual painting. Yet while the arrangement of the figures around the cradle is clearly based on the drawing – albeit with significant adjustments – the pervading mood of the painting is entirely different. The figures in the drawing are outwardly expressive, they gesticulate to mark their sense of wonder. In the Beit picture, they are still and contemplative. The vibrant contrast between light and shade in the nocturnal drawing has given way to a more subtly modulated chiaroscuro in the painting. Most noticeably, the Virgin’s attitude has changed: in Isack’s sheet, she is showing her Child to the adoring assembly, but here, her demeanour has become more introspective, given to deep thought.
The Provenance
The Beit Adoration has passed through a number of extraordinarily discriminating and noteworthy collections during the course of its documented history. According to Smith (op. cit.), the picture first appeared in the celebrated cabinet of paintings, prints and drawings belonging to Valerius Röver in Delft. An early and avid collector of Rembrandt, Röver possessed no fewer than 8 pictures by the artist at the time of his death, including such masterpieces as The Descent from the Cross, 1634 (Saint Petersburg, Hermitage), Christ Appearing to the Magdalene, 1638 (The Royal Collection), Old Man with a Beard, 1632, Profile Portrait of Saskia, and Portrait of Nicolaas Bruyningh (the latter three all in Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister). In 1750, 54 pictures from the coveted Röver collection – presumably including the Beit Adoration – were sold by his widow Cornelia van Dussen en bloc for the formidable sum of 40,000 florins to Wilhelm VIII, Grand-Duke of Hesse-Kassel.
During his youth, Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hesse-Kassel spent nearly twenty years in the Netherlands, which ignited a lifelong passion for Dutch painting. The Röver acquisition of 1750 constituted a veritable coup on the part of the German prince, and formed part of an intense collecting effort carried out by Wilhelm VIII during that period. From 1748 to 1756, he deployed his diplomats and agents throughout the continent and purchased about 800 pictures in the buoyant markets of Holland, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp and Venice. From 1749 to 1751, he had a gallery erected behind the Landgrave’s palace, between the Auehang and the Frankfurter Straße, to house the growing collection. The gallery gathered by Wilhelm VIII and his descendants was one of the most brilliant aristocratic collections in pre-revolutionary Europe. In Germany, it only compared in scale and quality to that amassed by Wilhelm’s princely counterparts
in Munich and Dresden. The Röver pictures formed the core of Wilhelm’s Dutch picture collection and due to the incorporation of the Röver Rembrandts, Kassel can still pride itself today on owning a large number of autograph pictures by the master, one of the greatest such collections outside Holland. Beyond the Dutch School, the Landgrave also possessed prized Flemish pictures by Rubens such as Pan and Syrinx and the Portrait of Nicolas de Respaigne and Italian paintings, notably from Venice, with Titian’s commanding full-length Portrait of a Man in Armour (the three of which are still in Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister).
According to Smith (op. cit.), the Ostade picture was part of the invaluable loot taken by the French from the Landgrave’s collection in 1806. In October of that year, in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, the French troops, victorious at nearby Jena, entered Kassel. Leading the invasion, the ambitious general Lagrange took the extraordinary decision to send 48 of the most precious jewels in the Hesse-Kassel’s collection as a surprise ‘gift’ to Napoleon’s extravagant Empress Josephine Bonaparte in Mainz where she temporarily resided. Ironically, Vivant Denon, the then director of the Louvre Museum, who travelled with the rest of the army to select and oversee the lootings himself, arrived too late: ‘thus what would have been one of the most prestigious additions to Napoleon’s Louvre entered Malmaison [the empress’s legendary residence just outside Paris] instead.’ (A. Gerstein, ‘Josephine at Malmaison’, in F. Althaus and M. Stucliffe, France in Russia: Empress Josephine’s Malmaison Collection, London, 2007, p. 18).
Two years after the empress’s death and the fall of Napoleon, the picture reappeared on the Parisian art market with the dealer Alphonse Giroux, before entering the distinguished collection of the Sebastian Érard, a renowned musical instrument maker who fashioned pianos beloved by Haydn, Beethoven and Franz Liszt alike. At the dispersal of Érard’s collection in Paris in 1832, the Adoration was acquired by William Williams Hope, a colourful Englishman who resided in the French capital. Hope was a member of the eponymous family of legendary banker-collectors and was heir to a large fortune. A noted eccentric, he was said to possess a magnificent set of diamonds, which he often wore on his own person. Detesting male society, Hope was also reputed to maintain a coterie of eighteen ladies, distinguished by their musical or artistic attainments. Despite having purchased Rushton Hall in Northamptonshire, he spent most of his life in Paris where he owned a mansion at 131 rue Saint Dominique, in the upmarket neighbourhood of the Faubourg Saint Germain.
Upon its sale at Christie’s in 1849, the picture was acquired by a more austere character: John Walter, a liberal politician and media owner, famously proprietor of The Times. Walter was also a noted collector who lent no fewer than 13 works, including the Beit Adoration, to the Art Treasures Exhibition held in Manchester in 1857. A watershed event, often described as the first blockbuster exhibition, the show inspired John Walter to re-design his house, installing a modern, top-lit gallery to display his art collection. (E.A. Pergam, The Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition: Entrepreneurs, Connoisseurs and the Public, 2011, pp. 58-9, p. 84, n. 37). The Ostade, along with the Teniers also in this sale (see the preceding lot), are thought to have entered the Beit collection around the time of Walter’s death in 1894.
Painted in 1667, the Adoration demonstrates the shift that occurred during Ostade’s maturity, when he moved away from the raucous depictions of peasant revelry that had earned him fame, to offer more sympathetic and contemplative portrayals of humble life. Ostade very rarely addressed religious subjects and in doing so here, in his only known treatment of the theme, he arranges the nativity scene in a humble contemporary setting with a cast of modern day characters, presumably in an effort to communicate the story of Christ’s birth in a revitalising way to a contemporary protestant audience. The effect is startling.
The apparently simple setting of a ramshackle barn allows the painter to demonstrate the sheer breadth of his skills as a still-life painter, visible in his almost miniaturist rendering of the discarded shepherd staff in the foreground, the glistening water jug at the Virgin’s foot, the bread basket by her side and the harnesses hanging above Joseph’s head. A tonal winter twilight gently illuminates the scene. A group of six shepherds, harmoniously arranged around the cradle, remove their hats ceremoniously and kneel in front of the holy child. The truthful simplicity of their gestures reflects the sincerity of their devotion. Ostade shows the humble peasants with an expression of serene dignity as they become the first witnesses to the miraculous birth. Resting her head on her chin, the pose of the Virgin is reminiscent of that traditionally adopted by Melancholia after Albrecht Dürer’s invention. Despondent, she seems to meditate on the tragic fate that awaits her new-born son.
Ostade appears to have developed the composition from a related drawing attributed to his younger brother Isack (fig. 1; B. Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade, Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, Hamburg, 1981, I, p. 192, no. 581/U; II, p. 247, no. 581/U). We know that Adriaen inherited his brother’s drawings after the latter’s premature death in 1649; it is quite plausible, then, that he made use of the sheet almost two decades later for this ambitious and unusual painting. Yet while the arrangement of the figures around the cradle is clearly based on the drawing – albeit with significant adjustments – the pervading mood of the painting is entirely different. The figures in the drawing are outwardly expressive, they gesticulate to mark their sense of wonder. In the Beit picture, they are still and contemplative. The vibrant contrast between light and shade in the nocturnal drawing has given way to a more subtly modulated chiaroscuro in the painting. Most noticeably, the Virgin’s attitude has changed: in Isack’s sheet, she is showing her Child to the adoring assembly, but here, her demeanour has become more introspective, given to deep thought.
The Provenance
The Beit Adoration has passed through a number of extraordinarily discriminating and noteworthy collections during the course of its documented history. According to Smith (op. cit.), the picture first appeared in the celebrated cabinet of paintings, prints and drawings belonging to Valerius Röver in Delft. An early and avid collector of Rembrandt, Röver possessed no fewer than 8 pictures by the artist at the time of his death, including such masterpieces as The Descent from the Cross, 1634 (Saint Petersburg, Hermitage), Christ Appearing to the Magdalene, 1638 (The Royal Collection), Old Man with a Beard, 1632, Profile Portrait of Saskia, and Portrait of Nicolaas Bruyningh (the latter three all in Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister). In 1750, 54 pictures from the coveted Röver collection – presumably including the Beit Adoration – were sold by his widow Cornelia van Dussen en bloc for the formidable sum of 40,000 florins to Wilhelm VIII, Grand-Duke of Hesse-Kassel.
During his youth, Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hesse-Kassel spent nearly twenty years in the Netherlands, which ignited a lifelong passion for Dutch painting. The Röver acquisition of 1750 constituted a veritable coup on the part of the German prince, and formed part of an intense collecting effort carried out by Wilhelm VIII during that period. From 1748 to 1756, he deployed his diplomats and agents throughout the continent and purchased about 800 pictures in the buoyant markets of Holland, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp and Venice. From 1749 to 1751, he had a gallery erected behind the Landgrave’s palace, between the Auehang and the Frankfurter Straße, to house the growing collection. The gallery gathered by Wilhelm VIII and his descendants was one of the most brilliant aristocratic collections in pre-revolutionary Europe. In Germany, it only compared in scale and quality to that amassed by Wilhelm’s princely counterparts
in Munich and Dresden. The Röver pictures formed the core of Wilhelm’s Dutch picture collection and due to the incorporation of the Röver Rembrandts, Kassel can still pride itself today on owning a large number of autograph pictures by the master, one of the greatest such collections outside Holland. Beyond the Dutch School, the Landgrave also possessed prized Flemish pictures by Rubens such as Pan and Syrinx and the Portrait of Nicolas de Respaigne and Italian paintings, notably from Venice, with Titian’s commanding full-length Portrait of a Man in Armour (the three of which are still in Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister).
According to Smith (op. cit.), the Ostade picture was part of the invaluable loot taken by the French from the Landgrave’s collection in 1806. In October of that year, in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, the French troops, victorious at nearby Jena, entered Kassel. Leading the invasion, the ambitious general Lagrange took the extraordinary decision to send 48 of the most precious jewels in the Hesse-Kassel’s collection as a surprise ‘gift’ to Napoleon’s extravagant Empress Josephine Bonaparte in Mainz where she temporarily resided. Ironically, Vivant Denon, the then director of the Louvre Museum, who travelled with the rest of the army to select and oversee the lootings himself, arrived too late: ‘thus what would have been one of the most prestigious additions to Napoleon’s Louvre entered Malmaison [the empress’s legendary residence just outside Paris] instead.’ (A. Gerstein, ‘Josephine at Malmaison’, in F. Althaus and M. Stucliffe, France in Russia: Empress Josephine’s Malmaison Collection, London, 2007, p. 18).
Two years after the empress’s death and the fall of Napoleon, the picture reappeared on the Parisian art market with the dealer Alphonse Giroux, before entering the distinguished collection of the Sebastian Érard, a renowned musical instrument maker who fashioned pianos beloved by Haydn, Beethoven and Franz Liszt alike. At the dispersal of Érard’s collection in Paris in 1832, the Adoration was acquired by William Williams Hope, a colourful Englishman who resided in the French capital. Hope was a member of the eponymous family of legendary banker-collectors and was heir to a large fortune. A noted eccentric, he was said to possess a magnificent set of diamonds, which he often wore on his own person. Detesting male society, Hope was also reputed to maintain a coterie of eighteen ladies, distinguished by their musical or artistic attainments. Despite having purchased Rushton Hall in Northamptonshire, he spent most of his life in Paris where he owned a mansion at 131 rue Saint Dominique, in the upmarket neighbourhood of the Faubourg Saint Germain.
Upon its sale at Christie’s in 1849, the picture was acquired by a more austere character: John Walter, a liberal politician and media owner, famously proprietor of The Times. Walter was also a noted collector who lent no fewer than 13 works, including the Beit Adoration, to the Art Treasures Exhibition held in Manchester in 1857. A watershed event, often described as the first blockbuster exhibition, the show inspired John Walter to re-design his house, installing a modern, top-lit gallery to display his art collection. (E.A. Pergam, The Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition: Entrepreneurs, Connoisseurs and the Public, 2011, pp. 58-9, p. 84, n. 37). The Ostade, along with the Teniers also in this sale (see the preceding lot), are thought to have entered the Beit collection around the time of Walter’s death in 1894.