Cornelis Troost

The son of a theatrical family, Cornelis Troost’s status as one of the defining artists of the Dutch 18^th century is intimately entwined with his relationship with the theatre. His art in general is underpinned by a genius for storytelling, and highlighting the ironies of the human condition, and this talent found its natural expression in compositions such as this, illustrating scenes from popular satirical plays of the time. In some ways the Hogarth of the Low Countries, Troost’s representations of theatrical subjects are also profoundly Dutch, the natural successors to images of popular festivals and proverbial subjects painted by the likes of Jan Steen, but taking these narrative traditions in wonderfully engaging new directions. In terms of technique, Troost was even more of an innovator, choosing to work primarily on paper, in a unique combination of watercolor, bodycolor and colored chalks that has no precedents in the art of the Netherlands, or any other country.   

In this rambunctious composition, Troost for once turns away from the purely Dutch theatre, illustrating a scene with origins in the Italian Commedia dell’arte tradition, with its cast of stock characters who crop up in these farcical scenes across the stages of Europe, from the very early 18^th century on. Though Italian in origin, the more formalised comedies to which this exceptional pastel relates came to the Netherlands by way of France, in the 1720s. One of the chief Dutch proponents of the genre was the actor, poet and innkeeper Willem van der Hoeven, who was a good friend of Troost’s.

We see here several of the characters who are central to the commedia dell’arte – the swaggering soldier Capitano, the foolish quack doctor Belloardo, and the underhanded troublemaker Harlequin – acting out a scene from Van der Hoeven’s 1730 play, Harlequin, Magician and Barber. The basic plot is that Harlequin’s master, Anthonio, is in love with Sophia, but her father, Pantalon, thinks she would do better to marry the ‘brave’ Capitano (who actually runs away from any danger), or the ‘sensible’ Doctor Belloardo (who tends to kill, rather than cure, his patients). Disguised as a barber, Harlequin manages to make his master’s rivals look so idiotic and pathetic that Pantalon has a change of heart, and allows his daughter to marry Anthonio after all.   

Several of Troost’s most popular compositions exist in more than one version, and this is no exception; a larger variant, dated 1738, forms part of the celebrated series of pastels in the Mauritshuis, the Hague.¹ 

An engraving after this composition by P. Tanjé (fig. 1) was published in 1758 by P. Foucquet, with a dedication to Antoine Joseph de Bergk.

1. Inv. no. 183; 620 by 500 mm; Niemeijer, op. cit., no. 282T; see also E. Buijsen and J.W. Niemeijer, Cornelis Troost and the Theatre of his Time, exh. cat., The Hague, Mauritshuis, 1993, pp. 68-9, no. 19. Other compositions in the Mauritshuis series exist in even more versions: for example Captain Ulrich or Greed Deceived: the Bribe (Niemeijer no. 322T) is known in some seven versions and variants.