Jacob Duck

E. Borger, Geschilderde wachtlokalen. De Hollandse Kortegaard uit de Gouden Eeuw, Zwolle 1996, p. 54, reproduced;
N. Salomon, Jacob Duck, Doornspijk 1998, p. 155, no. 62.  

The painting is somewhat softer and less yellow in tone than the catalogue illustration suggests. The single panel is uncradled and in very good condition, with no damages apparent. There's a tiny fleck of paint loss in the upper left corner. The paint layer is secure, with a lot of detail in the figures still nicely intact, and is under a yellowed and glossy varnish. Tiny scattered discoloured old retouches can be made out in the walls and in the far background. Inspection under UV light only reveals more recent retouchings along the upper left edge, and minor strengthening in the standing figure on the left, as further inspection is impeded by the varnish layer. Offered in a decorative carved wood frame, with scroll leaf decorations in fair condition.
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Although it is not entirely certain when Jacob Duck was born, it probably was in Utrecht around 1600, as he married in 1620 and was apprenticed to the Utrecht painter Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot (1586-1666) in 1621 and joined the Guild of St. Luke that same year.¹ Duck is mostly known for his guardroom scenes or 'cortegaerdjes', of which the earliest is dated 1628 and the latest 1655. 

The theme of guardroom scenes had become popular through the Amsterdam artists Pieter Codde (1599-1678) and Willem Duyster (1599-1635) and it was one of the few genres praised by Philips Angel in his famous Lof der Schilder-konst from 1642.² These cortegaerdjes were characterized by their somewhat dark, and in the case of Duck, often wide and tall hallways or even church interiors, in which soldiers and officers were at their leisure. Also in this painting, the soldiers are not attending to their business like cleaning their weapons, or getting ready to go out on a battle, but are sitting around a table smoking, in the presence of several elegantly dressed women.
For a long time these scenes had been regarded as genuine representations of guardrooms of the Dutch Republic. The fact that these soldiers were idly sitting around was explained by the fact that in the second half of the Eighty Years war, starting with the Twelve Year Truce in 1609, no battles were being fought, hence the relaxing mode of the soldiers. Borger however, convincingly pointed out in 1996 that these men were not actual soldiers, but civil guards whose main task was to protect their cities. The popularity of the theme coincided with the big influence the civic guard had in these first years after the Twelve Year Truce, and it is not surprising that in these years, the 1620s, this genre emerged among painters.³ Another signed and very similar guardroom scene with elegant women was sold, London, Sotheby's, 9 July 1998, lot 18.

1. See N. Salomon under Literature, pp. 16-8.
2. op.cit., p. 33.
3. See E. Borger under Literature, pp. 23-4, 31.