Jacob Jordaens Antwerp 1593 - 1678

Ch. Martyne (L.1800);
bears printed green numbering, verso: 01076

Laid down and window mounted. Paper very slightly yellowed in parts, but colours and overall condition otherwise extremely good. Unframed.
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Like a number of his Dutch and Flemish contemporaries, Jordaens regularly depicted merry groups of drinkers, but in his case, these subjects were almost always illustrations of specific biblical themes or proverbs, rather than generalised genre scenes.  Jordaens had a particular fondness for proverbs, which he represented not only in paintings but also, uniquely for his time, in tapestries.  On 22 September 1644, he signed a contract to provide designs for a room of eight tapestries depicting proverbs, and various sets of tapestries after these original designs and others by Jordaens were woven during the following decades.¹

The present drawing relates to the tapestry illustrating the proverb “Ill gotten, Ill spent”, known throughout the Netherlands in the 17^th century in its Latin form, male partum male dilabitur, and also in various Dutch versions, some of which translate more like “Easy come, easy go”.  The tapestry, bearing the Latin motto, exists in at least two examples;²  its composition is broadly similar to the present drawing, though in reverse, and with certain differences of detail (for example, in the tapestry, the figure fondling the woman in the centre of the present composition is missing, and she finds her pleasure instead in playing the lute).  Another, painted variant of the composition, in the same direction as the drawing, is in the Collection of the Duke of Abercorn at Newtownstewart, Northern Ireland;³  this painting includes certain motifs from the drawing that are not found in the tapestry, but expands the composition to include several more figures.  

1. See Kristi Nelson, Jacob Jordaens, Designs for Tapestry, publ. Brepols (Belgium) 1998, pp. 33-36, 103-117.

2. See Nelson, op. cit., pp. 116-17, reproduced p. 288, fig. 79

3. Reproduced Nelson, op. cit., p. 342, fig. 41