Abraham Bloemaert Gorinchem 1566 - 1651 Utrecht

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Description

Abraham Bloemaert
Vertumnus and Pomona
signed and dated upper right: A.Bloemaert fc: / 1620
oil on canvas, in a carved and gilt wood frame

Provenance

Probably Count d' Oultremont,
Probably his sale, Leiden, 11-12 March 1754, lot 79, for 4,100 Florins to Fietjes;
Probably Jacob van Zaanen,
Probably his sale, The Hague, Rietmulder, 16 November 1767, lot 156;
Dr. Luchtmans,
His sale, Rotterdam, Muys, Van Leen, Lamme & Van Mierop, 20-22 April 1816, lot 16;
Neville Goldsmid, The Hague,
His deceased sale, Paris, Pillet/Féral, 4-5 May 1876, lot 14, for 305 francs to Voogt;
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Roos, 11 April 1904, lot 966;
Anonymous sale, Lucerne, Galerie Fischer, 29 November 1966, lot 2223;
Art market, New York, 1968;
Anonymous sale, New York, Parke-Bernet, 12 February 1970, lot 13, reproduced in the catalogue (with arched top), for $7,000 to Leger;
With Leger Galleries, London, 1973 (when extended from its previous size), from whom purchased for £6,500 by Mr Court on 30 October 1973.

Literature

E.J. Sluijter, De 'heydensche fabulen' in de Noordnederlandse Schilderkunst circa 1590-1670, dissertation, Leiden 1986, pp. 55-6, 91, reproduced fig. 88;
M.G. Roethlisberger, Abraham Bloemaert and his Sons: Paintings and Prints, Doornspijk 1993, vol. I, p. 218, cat. no. 280, reproduced vol. II, fig. 413 (as unknown, Private Collection);
E. J. Sluijter, De 'heydensche fabulen' in de Nederlandse Schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw, Leiden 2000, p. 150, reproduced fig. 91.

Catalogue Note

As Roethlisberger rightly observes, this is the last, largest and most accomplished of Bloemaert's treatments of this Ovidian subject, in which his earlier Mannerist traits have all but disappeared, to be replaced with a monumental classicism. His earliest treatment of this subject was his design for a print, engraved in 1605 by Jan Saenredam, in which Bloemaert placed the two protagonists in a fertile garden, with the abundant vegetables that he liked so much to draw strewn across the foreground. That engraving, the first specifically Dutch treatment of the subject, was both popular (by all accounts) and extremely influential, so that this subject rapidly became one of the most popular in Dutch history painting. It directly influenced Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, and their treatments of it (especially those of Goltzius) with their larger and bulkier figures, influenced in turn Bloemaert's later paintings of it such as the present picture, and those of his son Hendrick.

In the present painting, done fifteen years after Saenredam's print, the two figures, painted with solidity and volume, fill the picture plane, so that the garden in which the scene takes place is indicated only by a glimpse of a grapevine with ripe grapes beyond Vertumnus, a basket full of fruit, and a marrow behind Pomona - these sufficient to act as emblems of Pomona's comeliness and fecundity. Bloemaert may have chosen this subject for his 1605-design following Karel van Mander's exegesis of Ovid, published a year earlier, in which he commends the subject in which Pomona, symbolizes virtue, which must be attained with great efforts, just as Vertumnus set about to conquer her. On the other hand, the vegetal emphasis in Bloemaert's early treatments of the subject, of which echoes are still to be seen here, may also reflect the Dutch proverb of the time: "cucumbers are like Virgins, they musn't be kept too long".

It is unclear if this is the Vertumnus and Pomona by Bloemaert in the D'Oultremont and Van Zaanen sales (see Provenance), since no measurements are given in either sale catalogue. It can however be clearly identified from the more detailed entry in the Luchtmans sale catalogue.