Jacob Ochtervelt

A. Bout van Lieshout and Willem van Hogendorp;
Their sale, The Hague, Bosboom, May 3, 1797, lot 6, to Valette;
Joseph Valette;
His sale, Amsterdam, P. van der Schley, August 26, 1807, lot 218;
Engelberts;
His sale, Amsterdam, P. van der Schley, August 25, 1817, lot 97, to De Boer;
Carl Thürling, Amsterdam;
With Galerie van Diemen & Co., Amsterdam, 1929;
There purchased by Heinrich Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza (1875-1947);
By whom given to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen;
From whom acquired in exhchange by the present owner. 

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tentoonstelling van oude Kunst door de Vereeniging van Handelaren in oude Kunst in Nederland, 1929, no. 106.

U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, Vol. 25, Leipzig 1931, p. 556;
E. Plietzsch, "Jacob Ochtervelt," in Pantheon, vol. 20, 1937, p.370;
E. Plietzsch, Holländische und flämische Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig 1960, p. 66, note 1;
S.D. Kuretsky, The Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt (1634-1682), Montclair 1979, p. 68, cat. no. 37, reproduced figure 42 (as circa 1667, location unknown).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This panel is not shaved or reinforced on the reverse and the single piece of wood is in beautiful condition. The paint layer is stable, has been fairly recently restored and seems to be clean. The varnish is quite thick however, and the thickness which may not be to everyone's liking. There are no restorations visible under ultraviolet light. However, the bulk of the restoration is in the left background around and above the head of the woman. The figures generally seem to be in beautiful condition as does the still life of the table in the lower right. Above the woman, including the plates on the shelf in the rafters of the room, there seems to be a good deal of reconstruction. The fireplace and the figure of the man seem to be in much better shape. Given the fact that one would expect some thinness in the background, in the darker colors particularly, it is not a bad idea to clean this picture, although restoration will be required to produce a better surface and more accurate reconstruction of this area.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Jacob Ochtervelt was born in Rotterdam, but like his fellow townsman Pieter de Hooch, studied painting in Haarlem with Nicholas Berchem.  He probably entered the studio shortly after Berchem returned from Italy in 1646, and his earliest paintings reflect the Italianate influences of his teacher.  However, by 1660 he had focused on the genre scenes that made him one of Rotterdam's leading artists in the field and for which he is most famous today.  The majority depict contemporary scenes of well to do burghers in comfortable interiors, and reflect the influence of Frans van Mieris, and the Leiden school.  The Lemon Slice is datable around 1667 and reveals Ochtervelt in full possession of his powers, having integrated the refined technique of the Leiden school with his own more dramatic sense of composition.

Susan Kuretsky has confirmed the attribution and dating of the picture.¹ She relates it to a group of six genre pictures, all of which have as a protagonist a woman in essentially the same dress but in different situations.² The central work in the group is the Oyster Meal in Rotterdam  (see fig. 1), which is dated 1667 and derives from a painting of the same subject by Frans van Mieris, in the Mauritshuis, The Hague. In Ochtervelt's Oyster Meal and Lemon Slice an elegant woman in a red, fur-trimmed jacket and yellow satin skirt, perhaps even the same sitter, sits at a carpet-covered table.  Her back is to the viewer, but she is at a slight angle so that her right profile is visible.  Across from her, also at an angle, is a standing male companion, who offers her something:  in the Rotterdam painting, an oyster and here a thin slice of lemon on a fork. In the first, the woman reciprocates the man's gesture, stretching her arm out with her wine glass, as if to toast him or ask more wine.  The gestures in the present work are more restrained:  the man raises his empty left hand as if mitigating his own action, and the woman's hands are down at her side, suggesting she has not decided whether to accept the lemon slice. 

These differences in gesture signal the differences in the relationship of the two people and lead us to the meaning of the two paintings. The Oyster Meal was an openly erotic subject and extremely popular among Ochtervelt and his contemporaries.  From ancient times onwards the oyster was considered an aphrodisiac, and sometimes used as a symbol for female genitalia. The subject of the The Lemon Slice remains more of a mystery to modern viewers.  Ochtervelt himself treated it three more times and in all four paintings the lemon is associated with a glass of wine.³   The lemon may have been interpreted as a means of tempering the sweetness of the wine – thus suggesting temperance of conduct – or a reference to the "sour and sweet" aspects of love.⁴ Lemons, in addition, were seen as a cure for lovesickness and included in various depictions of languishing young women.⁵  It is not certain which interpretation is correct:  is the man proffering love or curing it – or both? and does the coat so prominently displayed on the chair belong to him or to someone else?  Other elements of the composition that might clarify the meaning are frustratingly unclear.  The painting over the fireplace, which could be a commentary on the action, is too indistinct to make out as are the roundels arranged along the back wall. 

What is crystal clear, however, is the beauty and refinement of the painting.  Ochtervelt has used the dark background as a foil to the brilliance of the woman's costume.  He lovingly depicts the different textures of the scarlet velvet, the soft, white fur and the shining lemon-colored satin.  The man is more subdued and cast largely in shadow, but the whiteness of his shirt sleeves gleam out of the dark background, as does the all important lemon slice.  By setting the figures at a diagonal, a hallmark of his style in the later 1660s, Ochtervelt rejects the formal perpendicularity of his predecessors and allows his figures to move more freely in space.  He both enlivens the composition and forces us to view the scene from a literally different angle. 

1.  In her 1979 monograph (see Literature) she records having known the work only from reproductions but has now seen it in person and confirmed the attribution in an oral communication of April 11, 2008.
2.  S. D. Kuretsky, Ibid., pp. 18 and 68.
3.  Kuretsky 53, 86 and 89, but only the first of these, which is in Dresden, can be traced
4.  See A. Wheelock, Jr., Gerard ter Borch, New York and Detroit 2004, p. 149 J. B. Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age, New Haven and London 2007, p. 74 and p. 325, note 47, for a discussion of the tempering effects of lemon, and A. Blankert, as quoted in S.D. Kuretsky, Op. cit., p. 68, for sour and sweet love.
5.  A Wheelock, Jr., Loc. cit.