JACOB JORDAENS | RECTO: INTERIOR SCENE WITH FIGURES SEATED AROUND A TABLE; VERSO: PARTIAL STUDY OF A SIMILAR SCENE

Sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 8 November 2000, lot 69,

purchased by Albin Schram, Lausanne,

by inheritance to the present owners

This drawing can clearly be linked with another interior scene by Jordaens showing a musical party, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.¹  D'Hulst dated the Oxford drawing to the mid 1640s and described it as a study for an unknown work, noting that the costumes and head-dresses of some of the figures are unusual in Jordaens' work. The costumes are identical in both drawings, as are the media, measurements and even the way in which the sheets have been extended around the edges. In addition, the motif of a young boy standing behind a chair which is seen on the verso of the present sheet reappears at the left edge of the Oxford drawing.

While these two drawings have similar figure groupings and formats to some of Jordaens' studies for the tapestry series illustrating eight Proverbs², and are presumably close to these works in date, they must have been intended for a different purpose. Michael Jaffé described the Oxford drawing as a 'masterly' work, showing Jordaens 'returning to the depiction of strong effects of artificial light in an interior'.³ The present work too has at its centre a candle casting strong beams on the faces gathered around the table, and it might be supposed that the lighting of the gloom is the central theme of both these drawings.

Albin Schram (1926-2005) was a voracious but discerning collector of works on paper and autograph documents. The story goes that his fascination with these records of human interactions and artistic creation was sparked when his mother presented him with a romantic letter written by Napoleon Bonaparte to his future wife Josephine de Beauharnais in an attempt to patch up an argument. The superb collection of late 19th and early 20th century works on paper from the Schram collection, including drawings by artists such as Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, August Macke, Emil Nolde and Alfred Kubin, was sold at Sotheby's last month, under the title: The Artist's Sketchbook: Where Inspiration finds Form.

1. R.-A. d'Hulst, Jordaens Drawings, London 1974, vol. I, cat. A206 and vol. III, fig. 221

2. See for example, d'Hulst, op. cit., vol. III, figs. 206, 220, 222, 223

3. Jacob Jordaens, exh. cat., Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 1968-9, cat. 218