Caspar Netscher Heidelberg (?) 1639 - 1684 The Hague

Jacques Ignatius de Roore (1686-1747), The Hague; 
With Willem Lormier, The Hague, by 1752, (mentioned as no. 197 of Lormier’s storeroom catalogue of December 1754, “Een sittende Juffer met een witte Satyne Rok, en een Staande, met een rood flueele bond gevoert Jakje, en een man staande, die een stuk goud laat sien, 1 v[oet] 2 1/2 d[uim] x 1 v. 1/2 d.,” as purchased from de Roore for ƒ308),
His sale, The Hague, 4 July 1763, lot 194 (“Een man tonende een stuk Goud aan twee juffers”; ƒ1600, to Voet);
William D. Acraman, Bristol (1833);
Probably Nathaniel, 1st Lord Rothschild, 148 Piccadilly, London;
Thence by descent to Victor Rothschild:
His sale on the premises at 148 Piccadilly, London, Sotheby's, 19 April 1937, lot 14, ill.(£700, to Rosenberg);
Purchased by the family of the present owner circa 1940.

G. Hoet, Catalogue ofte Naamlyst van schilderyen, 3 vols. in 2 , The Hague, 1752, vol. 2 p. 433;
J.-B. Descamps, La Vie des Peintres Flamandes, Allemand, et Hollandois..., 4 vols. Paris, 1753-64, vol. 3, p. 84 (as in Lormier collection);
P. Terwesten, Catalogus ofte Naamlyst van Schilderyen, met derselver prysen zedert den 22. Augusti 1752 tot den 21 November 1768, The Hague, 1770, p. 326;
J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. 4, London 1833, pp. 158–59, no. 45 (as The Fortune Teller, in Acraman collection, and valued by the owner at £300), and 164 no. 65 (as A Gentleman showing a Gold Medal to two Ladies, mentioned in Descamps);
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. 5, London 1913, pp. 176 no. 79 (as The Fortune-Teller, collection Acraman), and 184 no. 104 (as The Seduction);
Pantheon, 19 April 1937, p. 128, reproduced; 
M. E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch painting, Doornspijk 2002, pp. 64, 184 no. 26 (as location unknown);
M.E. Wieseman, `Paper Trails: Drawings in the Work of Caspar Netscher, his Pupils and Followers,' in V. Manuth and A. Rüger (eds)., Collected Opinions: Essays on Netherlandish Art in Honour of Alfred Bader, London 2004, p. 253.

Scenes of love and gallantry dominate Caspar Netscher’s genre paintings of the mid-1660s.  While most are politely circumspect or mildly flirtatious, The Seduction offers a more pointed representation of venal love.  Here, the elegant young woman standing at left assumes the role of the procuress: pointing insistently at her palm, she demands money from the young man seated before her.  He, in turn, dutifully offers up a gold coin in payment.  The second young woman, clad in a lustrous satin gown, is poised with pitcher and glass, ready to commence festivities the moment the transaction is completed.  On the carpet-covered table at right are a lute and an open songbook.  The amorous connotations of music in Dutch paintings are well documented: while the lute was capable of conveying a multitude of meanings, in this instance it was most likely included as a signifier of voluptuousness, luxury, and unchastity.

The Seduction was painted in 1664, at the start of Netscher’s most productive years as a purveyor of high-life genre scenes.  Characteristic of paintings from this phase of the artist’s career are the pleasantly rounded figures and the palette of warm russet tones that exudes warmth and sensuality.  Comparable works by the artist include Two Ladies and a Gentleman talking over a Letter (Staatliches Museum, Schwerin) and The Singing Lesson (Musée du Louvre, Paris); both were also painted in about 1664, and feature the same three models as protagonists. 

Netscher’s painting belongs to a long tradition of Netherlandish representations of love for sale, which includes Dirck van Baburen’s ribald Procuress (1622; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) and Johannes Vermeer’s bold depiction of the same subject (1656; Dresden, Gemäldegalerie).  In keeping with the more refined sensibilities that permeated much of Dutch painting in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in The Seduction the carnal transaction is discretely cloaked in polite behavior and the tasteful material trappings of genteel wealth.  The conscious ambiguity created by locating a scene of mercenary love within an affluent domestic setting, coupled with the artist’s concern for the tactile rendering of surface textures, clearly announces Netscher’s training in the studio of Gerard ter Borch.  Indeed, ter Borch’s Gallant Conversation (circa 1655, Staatliches Museum, Schwerin) may have served as the immediate formal source for Netscher’s composition, though the seated man in ter Borch’s painting proffers a glass of wine rather than a gold coin, effectively excluding this work from the cadre of love-for-sale images.

In the more prudish decades of the nineteenth century, the coy blend of elegance and eroticism that make The Seduction such a delightfully enigmatic painting engendered some confusion about the true subject of the composition.  In 1833 John Smith interpreted the painting as a depiction of a fortune teller plying her trade, with the young man offering up a coin in the hope of securing a favorable result.  The error was perpetuated into the twentieth century by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, despite the fact that the wine and music so conspicuously flanking the pretty subject of Netscher’s painting—not to mention the bed discretely tucked in the far corner of the room—are standard components in nearly every seventeenth-century depiction of bordellos or love for sale.

A quick ricordo drawing of this composition by the artist is in the Graphischen Sammlung der Staaatsgalerie, Stuttgart (graphite on paper, 196 x 158 mm; inv. I/1070).  While fairly common in other parts of Europe, the practice of sketching a painted composition after the fact as a means of documenting it for future reference seems to have been unusual, if not unique among seventeenth-century Dutch artists.  Netscher’s ricordi—occasionally annotated with dates, prices, or working notes pertaining to color and composition—were made for his own use, either by himself or (later in his career) by an assistant, and were closely guarded within the studio.  Surviving sketches offer a valuable record of lost paintings, of dates and prices for individual works, and more generally shed light on Netscher’s studio practice.  The ricordo of The Seduction is inscribed on the recto geschildert Anno 1664 / 66: and on the verso, geschildert Anno 1664 voor 66 guldens, giving rare insight into the prices commanded by Netscher’s paintings during his lifetime.  Although some of the prices inscribed on Netscher’s ricordo drawings have been obliterated by a later hand, those that remain range from ƒ50, for the Woman with a Letter and a Medallion of 1667 (Kassel, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister), to ƒ140, for the Self-Portrait with Wife and Children of 1664, now in the Uffizi.  If somewhat below the famously extravagant prices commanded by the Leiden fijnschilders Gerrit Dou or Frans van Mieris, these prices are certainly more than respectable for a highly sought-after artist at the start of a successful career.

Dr. Marjorie Weiseman, 2005

Provenance:
The provenance of this picture is particularly distinguished having belonged to the seventeenth century painter and dealer Jacques de Roore who amassed an important collection as well as later becoming a part of the distinguished collection of Nathaniel Mayer de Rothschild, London.