RKD STUDIES

Amersfoort, c. 1656–Rome, after 1716
Dutch painter

Jacob van Staverden is also known as Jacob van Staveren.¹ It seems that until 1672 he was a pupil of Matthias Withoos (c. 1627–1703), the Amersfoort painter of still lifes and Italianate landscapes. In 1674 (probably in the spring) he went to Italy with a fellow pupil, Caspar van Wittel (c. 1653–1736). On 3 January 1675 they witnessed the baptism of a new member of the ‘Bentvueghels’ (Birds of a Feather), a group of Dutch and Flemish artists in Rome, and signed with their own Bentvueghel nicknames: Van Wittel was ‘de Toorts van Amersfoort’ (the Torch of Amersfoort) and Van Staverden ‘IJver van Amersfoort’ (the Zeal of Amersfoort). Van Wittel became a very famous painter of vedute of Rome; Van Staverden was less successful with his still lifes of flowers and fruit, according to the 18th-century biographer Van Gool, and none is known today. He appears to have been back in Amersfoort in 1686 and 1687, but in 1689 and 1693–4 he was in Rome again, in the same house as Van Wittel. In 1694 he stopped painting and became a member of the Papal Guard.

A few bambocciate scenes by Van Staverden survive, often including a still life and a woman with a guitar or other stringed instrument. His only dated painting is Return from the Hunt, of 1674 (Related works, no. 1) [1].

LITERATURE
Gudlaugsson 1956–7; Trezzani 1983c; Heijenga-Klomp 1991; Van der Willigen & Meijer 2003, p. 189; Ecartico, no. 7067: http://www.vondel.humanities.uva.nl/ecartico/persons/7067 (April 2, 2018; as Jacob van Staveren, alias Staverden); RKDartists&, no. 74764: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/74764 (April 2, 2018).

1
Jacob van Staverden
Return from the hunt, dated 1674
Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, inv./cat.nr. 4152

c. 1670–94; copper, 20.4 x 30 cm

PROVENANCE
?Desenfans sale 8 April 1786 (Lugt 4022), lot 346;² Bourgeois Bequest, 1811; Britton 1813, p. 31, no. 330 (‘Unhung / no. 61, Sportsman & female in landse. do. [= & buildings] Cop[per] F Mola’; 1'4" x 1'6").

REFERENCES
Cat. 1817, p. 6, no. 83 (‘FIRST ROOM – East Side; Sportsman and Female Figures; Jan Miel’); Haydon 1817, p. 377, no. 83 (Jan Miel);³ Cat. 1820, p. 6, no. 83; Cat. 1830, no. 21 (Jan Miel); Jameson 1842, ii, p. 446, no. 21 (Jan Miel);⁴ Denning 1858 and 1859, no. 21 (‘not like the work of Jan Miel’);⁵ Sparkes 1876, p. 97, no. 21 (ascribed to Miel); Richter & Sparkes 1880, p. 96, no. 21 (Miel);⁶ Richter & Sparkes 1892 and 1905, p. 5, no. 20; Cook 1914, p. 14, no. 20; Cook 1926, p. 14; Cat. 1953, p. 28; Kren 1980, ii, pp. 211–12, no. D57 (possibly Antoine Goubau); Murray 1980a, p. 83 (doubtful about the attribution to Miel);⁷ Murray 1980b, p. 19; Trezzani 1983a, p. 295, note 3 (not by Goubau; close to Sébastien Bourdon and circle of the Maestro dei Mestieri); Beresford 1998, p. 115 (attributed to Goubau); Tieze 2004, pp. 27–8, 164–5, no. C10 (possibly circle of Jacob van Staveren; not later than 1640s); Dejardin 2009b, pp. 20–21 (Goubau); Jonker & Bergvelt 2016, pp. 234–5 (attributed to Jacob van Staverden); RKD, no. 289025: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/en/images/289025 (April 7, 2018).

DGP20
attributed to Jacob van Staverden
Landscape with Figures, c. 1670-1694
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG20

TECHNICAL NOTES
The panel has an undulating surface from the hand preparation of the copper plate. The ground is warm red-brown. The copper support is slightly buckled in the lower left corner. The paint layers have been well preserved with only tiny flake losses and minor small damages. There has been some pigment change in the woman’s orange dress and in the blue foliage group in the lower right corner. Previous recorded treatment: 1867, ‘revived’ and revarnished; 1953, cleaned and restored and frame re-gilded, Dr Hell; 2008 cleaned and restored, N. Ryder.

RELATED WORKS
1) Jacob van Staverden, Return from the Hunt, signed and dated J v Staveren fec. 1674, canvas, 66 x 50.5 cm. KMSKB, Brussels, 4152 [1].⁸
2a) Anton Goubau, Village Musician, signed A. gebau F., c. 1645, panel, 50 x 75 cm. Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 1041 [2].⁹
2b. Attributed to Anton Goubau, Before an Inn, panel, 51 x 44 cm. Kunsthalle, Hamburg.¹⁰
2c. Attributed to Anton Goubau, A Bivouac of Soldiers, copper, 22.5 x 33 cm. Pallavicini Gallery, Rome, 309.¹¹
2d. Anton Goubau, Merry Company in a Military Camp, signed Ao. GOVBAV. F., panel, 35.5 x 47 cm. National Gallery, Prague, O. 200 [3].¹²
3a. Sébastien Bourdon, Rest of the Soldiers (formerly incorrectly Rest of the Bohemians), panel, 43 x 58 cm. Louvre, Paris, 2818 [4].¹³
3b. Sébastien Bourdon, The Card Players, also called Camp Scene, Rest of the Soldiers, signed and dated bonvijn / 1643, panel, 36.5 x 50 cm. Staatliche Museen, Kassel, GK 471 [5].¹⁴
3c. Attributed to Sébastien Bourdon, Soothsayer at an Inn, panel, 44 x 60 cm. Rijksdienst voor Cultureel Erfgoed, Rijswijk [6].¹⁵
4a. Attributed to Jacob van Staverden, Couple with a Dog, copper, 10 x 12 cm (oval). Present whereabouts unknown (Rafael Valls, London, 1990; Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 22 May 1989, lot 1) [7].¹⁶
4b. Attributed to Jacob van Staverden, Hunters resting, copper, 50 x 29.6 cm. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica (Palazzo Corsini), Rome, 119 [8].¹⁷
4c. Attributed to Jacob van Staverden, Orpheus and the Animals, copper, 19 cm (round). Present whereabouts unknown (John Mitchell, London; Christie’s, 25 April 2008, lot 4) [9].¹⁸
5) Attributed to Michael Sweerts, A Couple and a Boy in a Garden, canvas, 33.7 x 48.8 cm. Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass., purchase Charlotte E. W. Buffington Fund, no. 1961.40 [10].¹⁹

2
Anton Goubau
Village musician, c. 1645
Florence, Palazzo Pitti, inv./cat.nr. 1890 n. 1041

3
Anton Goubau
Merry company in a military camp
Prague, Národní Galerie v Praze, inv./cat.nr. O 200

4
Sébastien Bourdon
Rest of the Soldiers
Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv./cat.nr. 2818

5
Sébastien Bourdon
Cardplayers, dated 1643
Kassel, Museum Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, inv./cat.nr. GK 471; (1749).145

The scene depicts a huntsman reloading his gun in a landscape. He is silhouetted against the sky. Next to him a woman sits on the ground, holding the neck of a lute. To the left is the hunter’s dog, and in the background a village dominated by a castle stands out against an Italian (?) plain. This enigmatic painting would seem to have some sort of allegorical or symbolic intent regarding the natures of men and women, but has so far eluded explanation.

The attribution has been highly controversial. Britton in 1813 ascribed it to Pier Francesco Mola (1612–66), an Italian 17th-century artist who specialized in history painting. The name the Dulwich catalogues mention, since the first one published by Cockburn in 1817, is Jan Miel (1599–1664), although Denning in 1858 and 1859 and Murray in 1980 expressed their doubts. In his 1978 monograph on Miel Thomas Kren rejected the attribution, in favour of the Flemish artist Anton Goubau (1616–98). He noted that the facial type of the woman is similar to that of a young peasant woman in Goubau’s signed Village Musician (Related works, no. 2a) [2], while the drapery and clothing are similar to those in a work that he attributes to Goubau (Related works, no. 2b). Another signed work by Goubau shows some similarities in figure types (Related works, no. 2d) [3], but the still life on the right places the artist in the tradition of David Teniers II (1610–90). Kren notes that the main characters in a picture in Rome which he also attributed to Goubau (Related works, no. 2c) are a similar male and a girl holding a stringed instrument. He has continued to maintain the attribution to Goubau, a judgement supported by David A. Levine.²⁰

Other Goubau scholars, however, do not agree with the attribution. Trezzani suggested similarities to the work of the French painter Sébastien Bourdon (1616–71) and the Roman Maestro dei Mestieri (Master of the Small Trades), who was active in Rome c. 1645–50.²¹ It is known that Goubau and Bourdon collaborated in Paris on bambocciate pictures.²² There are strong similarities to DPG20 in at least three paintings now ascribed to Bourdon (Related works, nos 3a–3c), for instance the dog in a painting in the Louvre (Related works, no. 3a) [4] and the female protagonist in The Soothsayer at an Inn (Related works, no. 3c) [6]. However, as these are all attributions, they may well be by an artist other than Bourdon.

Another suggestion was made by Peter Sutton: DPG20 might be by Jacob van Staveren (or Staverden), who was active some decades later than the artists mentioned so far; Sutton cites a similar composition attributed to that artist (Related works, no. 4a) [7]. More recently, Agnes Tieze in her monograph on Goubau rejected the attribution to him and suggested ‘circle of Van Staveren’.²³ Only one signed painting by Van Staveren or Staverden is known (Related works, no. 1) [1], so his œuvre is entirely based on stylistic attributions. Among those pictures there are at least two that look like DPG20 – a painting in Rome (Related works, no. 4b) [8], of which a copy exists in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and a roundel with Orpheus and the Animals (Related works, no. 4c) [9].

To complicate matters, a picture ascribed to Michael Sweerts (1618–64) shows a similar girl and silhouetted figure of a man (Related works, no. 5) [10]. It seems that in Rome, Paris and Antwerp a group of artists were painting very similar pictures. We consider that the most plausible author of DPG20 is Jacob van Staverden.

6
Sébastien Bourdon
Soothsayer at an inn
Amersfoort, Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, inv./cat.nr. NK 2180

7
attributed to Jacob van Staverden
Couple with a dog
London (England), art dealer Rafael Valls Limited