Pieter Fransz. de Grebber

Private collection, France;
With Galerie van Diemen, Berlin;
Their forced liquidation sale, Berlin, Paul Graupe, 26-27 April 1935, vol. II, lot 35;
With Galerie Stern, Düsseldorf (acquired at the above sale);
With Galerie Heinemann, Wiesbaden (acquired from the above on 14 January 1937);
Museum Wiesbaden (acquired from the above in exchange on 11 August 1937);
Restituted to the heirs of Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer in 2010.

 

The actual painting is warmer in tone than the catalogue illustration suggests. The canvas has a slightly stiff relining. No damages are apparent. The paint layer is secure, if a little thin in some areas, e.g. in the hair of both figures and in the trees. Small retouchings and strengthening are visible in the dog, in the objects and goat on the right, and there's a spot of retouching in the centre. The paint surface is under a yellowed layer of varnish. Inspection under UV light is partially impeded by the dirty varnish layer, but does reveal some additional small retouchings along the lower edge, and in the face of the shepherd. The shepherdess is very nicely preserved. Offered in a plain wood frame with a gilt fillet in good condition.
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This charming pastoral scene of a young couple in peasant dress is one of few pastoral scenes known by De Grebber today. Better known as a painter of religious and historical subjects, his other pastoral subjects include a Marriage portrait, signed and dated 1645, sold London, Sotheby's, 10 July 2003, lot 22, and a Granida and Daifilo, now lost.¹

The growth in popularity of the pastoral theme went hand-in-hand with the proliferation of pastoral plays, songbooks and poetry in the 17^th Century, and was first developed in Utrecht in the early 1620s by Dutch Caravaggist artists such as Hendrick Terbrugghen (1588-1629), Paulus Moreelse (1571-1638) and Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656)², who all painted single figure shepherds and shepherdesses at half length, often with an overt sensuality. The interest for the pastoral theme rapidly spread to other artistic centres, and by the 1640s was so widely recognized that the inclusion of even a single pastoral attribute could suggest an arcadian note to a contemporary audience.

In the present work, De Grebber, has ably created a leisurely and affectionate atmosphere, with limited pastoral attributes. He has placed his large-scale figures in rustic attire close to the picture plane and set them against an open air background. The boy, dressed as a shepherd is accompanied by a goat and the girl is holding a wide-brimmed straw hat. Other bucolic references, such as a staff, a bodice with a plunging neckline, a flower wreath, a pomegranate or other fruit, or a sceptre and a shell, as a reference to the story of Granida and Daifilo, have here been omitted. However, of the few attributes in this composition, one is particularly explicit: De Grebber has placed a flute in his shepherd's hand, this alluding to the ancient association of music, courtship and love.

We are grateful to Dr. Peter C. Sutton, Executive Director of the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut, and to Dr. Bernhard Schnackenburg for endorsing the attribution to De Grebber on the basis of digital images. Sutton dates the painting to the 1630s, while Schnackenburg suggests a date around 1640. According to Sutton it may be regarded as a portrait historié.

1. See A. McNeil Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia, Montclair 1983, fig. 146.
2. See J. de Meyere, 'Utrecht als centrum van pastorale schilderkunst', in P. van den Brink (ed.), Het Gedroomde Land. Pastorale Schilderkunst in de Gouden Eeuw, exhibition catalogue, Zwolle 1993, pp. 33-57.