Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne Delft circa 1589 - 1662 The Hague

As for the previous lot;
van Pallandt sale, Amsterdam, 26 September 1972, lot 374 (purchased by the present owner)

The moralising poetry of Jacob Cats provided Adriaen van de Venne with an immensely rich vein of source material for his illustrations. Though one expressed it in words and the other in images, both men possessed a rare combination of wit, humour and insight into the human condition, and the collaboration between the two resulted in the publication of a series of the most delightful, imaginative and often just plain funny, illustrated books of the period.

One of the most celebrated, and most often reprinted, of these was Hovwelyck ("Matrimony"), which first appeared in 1625 and went through numerous editions during the following decades. This is the work for which the four drawings in this and the following lot are illustrations. The text describes, in six "books", the situation of the good Christian woman at different stages of her life, and the associated duties of the man. The six stages are: Maeght (girl), Vrijster (literally, "batchelorette"), Bruyt (bride), Vrouwe (wife), Moeder (mother) and Weduwe (widow).

The public appetite for this entertaining yet improving book is clear from the numerous editions and reissues that appeared over the decades following its initial publication. The first, quarto, edition of 1625 was richly illustrated with prints based on designs by van de Venne, but reflecting the book’s format, these were larger in scale than the present drawings (the same size as the drawing in the previous lot). In 1628, there followed a smaller, octavo edition, with an entirely new set of illustrations after van de Venne, and this edition was reissued, with a few additional illustrations, in 1632. Then in 1634 another octavo edition was published, with yet another new set of illustrations by van de Venne, followed by several other editions and reprints.

The four drawings in this and the following lot all belong to van de Venne’s second set of illustrations for Hovwelyck, although according to Hollstein, only three were used for the initial 1628 version (we have only been able to study the 1632 version of this edition, which contains prints after all four drawings). Using the pagination of the 1632 printing, the print after the drawing of The Suitor Sieved appears on p.258, within the text of the first part of the book entitled "Bride". It shows the parents of the bride-to-be mercilessly "sieving" the prospective bridegroom, to expose all his secrets and hidden vices - his drinking, smoking and gambling, and apparently also various children, presumably unacknowledged until this moment. The accompanying text describes how "lover-boy has to be roasted and turned around like a sausage, until they know by his smell and grease (reusel) what he is like. Only then can they rightly give their daughter away to a stranger, which is a heavy decision."

The second drawing in this lot is for the illustration on p.416, within the text of the final section of the book, "Widow". There the text describes the situation of being an elderly parent, and says how hard it is for them to ask their children for help. Cats also quotes what he describes as an old saying: Haeckt yemant naer het erf ("Everyone yearns for the farmyard").

Despite their small scale, these four drawings contain all the wit, verve and technical mastery that characterises van de Venne’s best illustration designs. As is also the case for the previous lot, the fact that they have been preserved for so long in one collection means that they are in near-perfect condition, allowing us to see these qualities undiminished.