RKD STUDIES

1670, oak panel, 64.8 x 78.8 cm

PROVENANCE
Cartwright Bequest, 1686 (no. 175, £5; ‘A pictur of a bagpiper, & a man corting his Lass on a Large bord, in a black frame filited with gould’).

REFERENCES
Brown Ledger, 14 July and 13 October 1815: ‘Ditto (Linin.g Cleag Stipling &c.) a Conversation playing on bagpipes &c.; £ 2 18s’; Sparkes & Carver 1890, p. 41, no. 95; Richter & Sparkes 1892, p. 99, no. 357;¹ Richter & Sparkes 1905, p. 99, no. 358; Cook 1914, p. 212 (Artist Unknown); Cook 1926, p. 198; Cat. 1953, p. 58 (Unknown); De Marly 1990, p. 52, fig. 27 (British, c. 1670); Murray 1980a, p. 301 (Unknown (?Dutch)); Beresford 1998, p. 306 (Unknown; British?); Jonker & Bergvelt 2016, p. 312 (British?); RKD, no. 282050: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/282050 (Feb. 26, 2017).

EXHIBITION
London 1987–8, pp. 26, 60–61, no. 52 (N. Kalinsky; Artist unknown; English?).

TECHNICAL NOTES
The appearance is poor. The panel is made of three horizontal members. The joins are repaired, but paint losses remain unrestored. There is heavily discoloured overpaint and restoration on the paint surface and darkened uneven varnish. Previous recorded treatment: 1815, Robert Brown, see under References; 1987, loose paint secured, losses filled and inpainted, varnish applied, Area Museums Service for South Eastern England; 1991, panel members rejoined, paint losses filled but left unrestored, N. Ryder and V. Leanse.

RELATED WORKS
1a) Follower of Pieter Pietersz. I, Peasant Woman with Jug, c. 1600, panel, 68.5 x 53.1 cm. National Gallery, Prague, O 1403. [1]²
1b) Pieter Pietersz. I, Pair of Lovers in a Tavern, panel, 62 x 83 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 3572 [2].³
1c) Painting of a scene in a tavern with four figures and a child drinking [3].⁴
1d) Jan Massijs, Merry Company, signed and dated JOANNES MASSIIS / 1557, panel, 74.3 x 103.5 cm. Whereabouts unknown (previously coll. The Earl of Wemyss and March, Gosford House) [4].⁵
2a) Circle of Maerten de Vos? / French School?, Woman choosing between Youth and Age, a Scene from the Commedia dell’Arte, canvas, 117 x 170 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes.⁶
2b) Jacob Matham (formerly Jan Saenredam) after Hendrick Goltzius, A Young Woman prefers a Lover of her Own Age to the Riches of an Older Man, c. 1600–1630, engraving, 212 x 276 mm; inscribed HGoltzius Inuent. and Latin verses. BM, London, 1877,0811.911.⁷
2c) Two prints by Jacob Goltzius II after Hendrick Goltzius, Unequal Love, engraving, 141 x 185 mm and 142 x 184 mm. RPK, RM, Amsterdam, RP-P-1901-A-22283/84.⁸
3) Adriaen Matham after Hendrick Goltzius, A Prostitute and her Customer, engraving, 435 x 300 mm. RPK, RM, Amsterdam, RP-P-OB-23.165 [5].⁹
4) Cornelis Dusart, The Five Senses / T’Gehoor (Hearing), c. 1693, mezzotint, 249 x 183 mm. BM, London, S.3812.¹⁰
5) Nicolaes Braeu after Karel van Mander I, ‘When ye bags full my pipe most sweetly sounds’, from Proverbs after Karel van Mander, c. 1592, with Latin and English verses, engraving, 245 x 171 mm. BM, London, 1875,0213.316.¹¹
6) Peeter Baltens, The Night of the Wedding, monogrammed PB, with French and Dutch verses, engraving, 178 x 228 mm. BM, London, 1870,0625.657.¹²
7) Jan van de Velde II, Aestas (Summer), 1617, etching and engraving, 263 x 350 mm. BM, London, D,5.151.¹³

DPG358
British School
Bagpiper, girl and older man, c. 1670
panel (oak), oil paint 64,8 x 78,8 cm
Dulwich (London), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG358

1
follower of Pieter Pietersz (I)
Peasant Woman with a Jug, 1586-1600
Prague, Národní Galerie v Praze, inv./cat.nr. O 1403

A lower-class scene in a tavern, probably painted in Britain in the second half of the 17th century, after earlier, 16th-century, Netherlandish examples.¹⁴ For the woman see another Scene in a Tavern (Related works, no. 1c) [3], Peasant Woman with Jug, by a follower of the Dutch painter Pieter Pietersz. I (c. 1540/41–1603; Related works, no. 1a) [1], and A Pair of Lovers in a Tavern by Pieter Pietersz. himself (Related works, no. 1b) [2], where the man is also touching the breast of the girl. According to the costume historian De Marly, DPG358 was painted c. 1670: it features a rare portrayal of an English farm woman’s summer costume – a corset with two shoulder straps (probably home-made) and a broad-brimmed straw hat. The bagpiper is dressed in an old-fashioned 16th-century style. The man in the middle wears a fur hat and a greatcoat.¹⁵

Cartwright’s collection included at least one other depiction of lower-class figures on a large scale: see A he foole with a candell & a shee foole with a mous-trap (Boy with a Candle and Girl with a Mousetrap; DPG413; British). It is not sure whether A Jester (DPG512; Flemish) came from Cartwright’s collection. Kalinsky has related all three pictures to the theatre. DPG512 seems to derive from the same sources as DPG358, i.e. 16th-century Flemish painters like Pieter Huys (c. 1519–c. 1581) and Jan van Hemessen (c. 1500–1556/7). Their contemporary Jan Massijs (1509–75) also frequently depicted such figures on a large scale, and in very similar satirical scenes with ‘unequal lovers’ (an old man with a young woman, or an old woman with a young man).¹⁶ These artists included bagpipes in other scenes, such as the prodigal son in a brothel, from the Biblical parable (Luke 15:11–32),¹⁷ or in a Merry Company (Related works, no. 1d), or A Bagpiper and his Wife.¹⁸ In the Northern and Southern Netherlands at the time the unequal lovers are shown as belonging to higher social classes (Related works, nos 2a and 2b, the latter with a Latin inscription), in scenes mostly without bagpipes. The theme is money (in the form of bags or purses), or the rejection of it. A lower-class scene where a prostitute with a customer is depicted (Related works, no. 3) [4] could also be seen as ‘unequal love’ or ‘unequal lovers’.

According to Guido Jansen the subject of DPG358 is unequal lovers.¹⁹ Indeed the young woman, who seems to be engaged to the young bagpiper, as the flowers on their hats indicate,²⁰ has chosen the older man, and taken his purse. Her morals are questionable: she holds a glass in her hand and lets the older man touch her breast. Scenes of unequal lovers usually do not include bagpipes, alcohol, or broad-brimmed straw hats (Related works, no. 2c). Indeed here other iconographical traditions seem to play a part as well. Bagpipes, alluding to sex, may be included in tavern scenes, associated with alcohol, as in a depiction of Hearing as one of the Five Senses (Related works, no. 4), where people are singing in a tavern, accompanied by a bagpipe.²¹ In a print after Karel van Mander I (1548–1606) with an English and Latin inscription alcohol and bagpipe/sex are associated (Related works, no. 5). Bagpipes also occur in scenes of the Weeping Bride, who is afraid of what will happen on her wedding night, for instance in an engraving by the Flemish 16th-century printmaker Peeter Baltens (1527/8–84), The Evening of the Wedding (Related works, no. 6). Although this is a different subject, the way the low-life figures are depicted in a shallow row (or in a nondescript space/room), the jug and the bagpipe are very comparable to DPG358: probably a print like this was the source of DPG358. The summery feeling of the girl’s dress and straw hat can be found in depictions of Summer, or sometimes even of Spring, albeit on a much smaller scale (Related works, no. 7).

4
Jan Massijs
Merry company with unequal couple, 1557 (dated)
Gosford House, Wemyss Castle (Fife), private collection James Donald - 13th Earl of Wemyss and 9th Earl of March Charteris

5
Adriaen Matham after Hendrick Goltzius
Unequal Pair, 1615-1631
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-OB-23.165