Attributed to Jacob Jordaens

With P.D. Colnaghi & Co., London, 1961

Dessins Flamands et Hollandais du Dix-Septième Siècle, exhibition catalogue, Brussels, Rotterdam and Paris 1972-3, p. 35, under cat. no. 54;
R.-A. d'Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, vol. II, Brussels 1974, p. 528, cat. no. C50 (as a copy after Jordaens), reproduced vol, IV, fig. 527

Unframed. Laid down on an old mount. The chalk is slightly rubbed in parts, with some slight light brown stains above the hat of the central woman. Otherwise the condition is fine.
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This charming night scene shows three generations of one family: grandparents, a married couple and their young son.  The men hold a lantern with a single candle burning inside, while the mother opens the door of another lantern, so that her son may light his candle.  The group illustrates a saying quoted in Jacob Cats' Spiegel van den Ouden ende Nieuwen Tijdt.  The relative size of the lanterns- that of the grandparents being smaller than the parents'- is symbolic of life being passed from one generation to the next, and the hope that the elders' virtue will be continued by the generation which follows them.¹

Jordaens' oeuvre includes numerous illustrations of proverbs, not only paintings but drawings and watercolours.  Of the latter, perhaps the most celebrated are the designs which he made for a series of eight tapestries, a commission undertaken for the Brussels tapestry-weavers Frans van Cotthem, Jan Cordys and Boudewijn van Beveren, on 22 September 1644.²  This drawing cannot be directly related to that commission, but is very similar in technique and conception to the surviving drawings from the series, and most probably dates from the same period of the artist's career.

Another version of this composition is in the Hermitage, St Petersburg, from which d'Hulst believed the present sheet to have been copied, by an unknown hand.³  However, when the Hermitage drawing was exhibited in 1972, this drawing was described, by comparison, as another autograph version, executed 'd'une manière plus souple, plus légère'.⁴ 

1.  See d'Hulst, op.cit., vol. V, p. 296

2.  Ibid., pp. 275-6, under cat. no. A188 

3.  Ibid., p. 528

4.  Dessin Flamands... loc.cit.