JACOBUS BUYS | Gentlemen discussing Copernican Theory (A Scene from the Theater)

Frans van de Velde, Amsterdam,
his sale, Amsterdam, 16 January 1775, book F, no. 309;
sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 13 November 1991, lot 335;
with Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York,
from whom acquired by the present owners in 1992

Boston, St. Botolph Club, A Selection of Dutch 18th Century Drawings and Watercolors from the Gordon Collection, 2003, no. 2

Hinge mounted to a modern, decorative mount. There are some very minor areas of rubbing to the extremities of the sheet and a small yellowish-white stain to the upper right corner. The work remains in otherwise very good condition, with the watercolor fresh and vibrant throughout this impressive sheet and the image strong. Sold in a modern giltwood frame.
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As is so often the case in the work of both Cornelis Troost and his only close pupil and follower, Jacobus Buys, this scene is closely linked to the theatre.  Though it could easily be interpreted as a simple genre scene, in fact it illustrates the 1715 farce, The Mathematicians or the Young Lady Who Ran Away, by the leading comic playwright of the day, Pieter Langendijk (1683-1756).  The same scene was illustrated by Cornelis Troost, in a fine pastel in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, and it is not really possible to improve upon the description of the subject given by Edwin Buijsen and J.W. Niemeijer, when cataloguing that drawing for the 1993 Mauritshuis exhibition, Cornelis Troost and the Theatre of his Time, Plays of the 18th century: 'The frivolous Eelhart (= Noble Heart) quite unexpectedly meets his beloved Isabel in the bar of an inn in Loenen. The young lady has run away from her uncle and guardian Anzelmus, who wants to force her to marry his 'learned' nephew Raasbollius (= Loudmouth).  Coincidentally, uncle and nephew are lodging in the very same inn, as is one of Rasbollius' colleagues, Doctor Urinaal (= Urinal). In a cunning fashion, Eelhart manages to impress Isabel's guardian and is finally given permission to marry her.'¹

Here, Rasbollius is engaged in a heated debate with Urinaal, concerning the orbit of the planets.  The former is in favour of Ptolemy's theory that the sun revolves around the earth.  Urinaal, on the other hand, believes the opposite.  The elements of the gentlemen's dinner have been temporarily hijacked and they serve admirably as the sun and revolving planets.  To the left, the servant, Filipijn, appears to have borrowed one of the planets to take a quick drink.  The inn-keeper looks on, from the right, in amazement at the scene he sees before him. Although the composition is not the same as that of Troost’s depiction of the same subject, executed 21 years earlier, Buys must surely have known his master’s pastel, if not in the original, then through the engraving after it, made by Pieter Tanjé.  Buys has, though, adapted the scene according to his own, rather different sensibility, playing down the exaggerated facial expressions and gestures of Troost’s characters, and using his own very characteristic, more colourful palette.

^1.  Edwin Buijsen and J.W. Niemeijer, Cornelis Troost and the Theatre of his Time, Plays of the 18th century, exhibition catalogue, The Hague, Mauritshuis, 1993, pp. 72-3, cat. 21