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

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 6 March 1942, lot 140 (as dated 1626);
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 17 November 1994, lot 74, where bought by Johnny van Haeften on behalf of the late husband of the present owner.

In his grisailles Adriaen van de Venne had a profound predeliction for the depiction in proverb and image of poverty, misery and death. Themes which he used and re-used for a long time throughout his career, especially after he had moved from Middelburg to The Hague in 1625.

The verb Armoe soeckt list (poverty leads to cunning) also occurs in a number of grisailles and polychrome paintings representing A blind organ grinder and a woman with a rumbling pot (see A. Plokker, Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne (1589-1662). De grisailles met spreukbanden, Leuven/Amersfoort 1984, pp. 66-71, nos. 19-20, and E. Buijsen, L.P. Grijp, Music and Painting in the Golden Age, The Hague/Zwolle 1994, pp. 306-11, no. 43). In Tafereel van de belacchende werelt (Den Haag 1635), a book written by the versatile Van de Venne himself, the meaning of this verb is explained on pp. 66-7:

'Arremoe soeckt list,
Daar geen Rijcken op en gist.
Om de Kost wordt veel versonnen,
Kost wordt ongelijck gewonnen'
(Poverty leads to cunning,
Of which a rich man has no idea.
Much is plotted to make a living,
Livelihood is unequally earned).

Although the third digit of the date in the painting is difficult to interpret, on stylistical grounds it seems most likely that it should be read as a '3', making the date 1636.

The figures of the blind man leaning on the lame woman were used more often in similar poses by Van de Venne (see for instance L.J. Bol, Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne. Painter and Draughtsman, Doornspijk 1989, p. 84, reproduced p. 80, fig. 68A).

Infrared photography done by Drs. Edwin Buijsen (with a Nikon Coolpix 5700 equipped with a Kodak Wratten 87C filter) has revealed underdrawing in the man and woman in the foreground as well as in the group of beggars to the right (see Figs. 1 and 2). The sketchy nature of the underdrawing is typical for the working procedure of Van de Venne in the years 1627-36. The cursory lines only provisionally indicate the position and shape of the figures, which were further determined during the paint stage. The underdrawing contains even less information than in most of his earlier dated grisailles. In paintings by Van de Venne dated after 1637 no underdrawings have so far been detected with infrared suggesting that from then on he prepared his works directly in paint.

We are grateful to Drs. Edwin Buijsen, who is currently preparing a dissertation on the paintings of Adriaen van de Venne, for his help in cataloguing this lot.