Jacob van Spreeuwen

Much like his close contemporary, Gerrit Dou, Van Spreeuwen was one of a few fijnschilderen (fine painters) in Leiden influenced by Rembrandt. Van Spreeuwen painted history subjects and allegories as well as genre scenes, but almost always employed a seventeenth-century interior setting. Just a few dozen works by Van Spreeuwen are known today, and the present lot is certainly one of the finest extant examples of a kitchen scene by the Leiden artist.

Although very little is known about Van Spreeuwen's life and clientele, the painting of the Crucifixion hanging above the hearth provides insight into the original owner of this work. Only Catholics would own such overtly figural Christian imagery during this period, and Catholics made up only about a tenth of the population of Leiden in the mid-seventeenth century.

Van Spreeuwen used facial types for his figures, in this instance creating a family resemblance between the mother and her two children. He lavished his attention on the textures of the foodstuffs and kitchen wares, such as the crinkly cabbage leaves, the shiny platters at lower right, and the worn parchment affixed to the center wall. The trompe-l'oeil wooden framing device recalls similar niches and windows in Dou's works. A related composition with a woman seated at the foot of a stairwell and her child behind her, as well as a man descending the stairs and a maid holding a large head of cabbage at right, is now in the National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design, Oslo.