Ludolph de Jongh

Private Collection, Montauban, France;

With Jacques Leegenhoek, Paris, by 2011;

Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 5 June 2013, lot 68;

Where acquired by Otto Naumann, New York;

His sale ("The Otto Naumann Sale"), New York, Sotheby's, 21 January 2018, lot 27;

Where acquired by the present collector. 

De Jongh was a leading painter in Rotterdam and one of the most versatile painters of his time, producing portraits, landscapes, hunting scenes and genre pictures, such as the present work. According to his biographer, Arnold Houbraken, he studied with Cornelis Saftleven in Rotterdam, Anthonie Palamedesz. in Delft, and Jan van Bijlert in Utrecht, after which he spent a seven year sojourn in France before returning to Rotterdam in 1643. He quickly established himself as one of that city’s most important painters, exerting a strong influence on such younger artists as Pieter de Hooch and Jacob Ochtervelt.

Though there is a scarcity of signed works by De Jongh, this painting is prominently signed and dated 1668, making it an important work in determining the artist’s artistic evolution. Lighter in tonality than his earlier interiors, the composition is punctuated throughout by the bright reds of the figures’ various garments and the curtains at left. The setting appears to be the interior of a tavern or inn, with figures gathered near a blazing fire. A young maid stands at center holding a jug in her right hand, her left hand on her hip. She does not interact with the three male figures, but directs her gaze towards the empty chair at left. An older man seated at center looks out knowingly at the viewer as he lifts his glass, while in the background a grinning young man emerges from a back room with his shirt untucked, implying that likely more than just drinking by the fire is going on. In spite of the merrymaking under way, there may be a moralizing message implied by the bunch of turnips depicted at lower right. In Netherlandish prints and literature of the period a pun was made on the Dutch word for turnip (raap) and the verb to scrounge (rapen), and turnips were sometimes used to signify greedy or distasteful behavior.¹

¹ W. Gibson, Figures of speech: picturing proverbs in renaissance Netherlands, Berkeley 2010, pp. 59-60, 74-77.