RKD STUDIES

Ypres, baptised on 5 February 1617–Vienna, 6 September 1678
Flemish painter and printmaker

Jan Thomas was probably a student or collaborator of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). He entered the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1639–40. After Rubens’s death in 1640 he was called upon to complete and retouch works left in Rubens’s studio. He continued to be active in Antwerp until c. 1654, then worked in Mainz (1654–6) and Frankfurt (1658) before settling in Vienna to enter the service of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614–62) and the Emperor Leopold I (1640–1705), who reigned 1658–1705. Thomas remained in Vienna for the rest of his life, painting portraits as well as pictures with secular and religious subjects in a rather official, courtly style. He also produced a number of prints.

LITERATURE
Heinz 1967, p. 155; Hairs 1977, pp. 188–90; Van Tatenhove 1995; Vlieghe 1996d; Galavics 2006–7; Saur, cix, 2020, p. 16 (U. B. Wegener); Ecartico, no. 7374: http://www.vondel.humanities.uva.nl/ecartico/persons/7374 (April 8, 2017); RKDartists&, no. 77186: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/77186 (Dec. 1, 2019).

canvas, 114 x 168 cm

PROVENANCE
?Charles-Alexandre de Calonne sale, Michael Bryan, London, 27 April 1795 (Lugt 5299a), lot 73 (‘Jordeans [sic] – A Shepherd and Shepherdess, with Cattle in a Landscape, very capital, equal to the finest works of Rubens’; annotation on V&A copy of catalogue, ‘25.0.’);¹ ?Charles Joseph, Graaf van Lichtervelde sale, Christie’s, 30 May 1801 (Lugt 6276), lot 26 (‘Jacob Jordaens – A Shepherd and Shepherdess’); bt Morris [perhaps related to Mrs Desenfans] for £19 8s.;² Bourgeois Bequest, 1811; Britton 1813, p. 27, no. 277 (‘Unhung / no. 8, Bacchanal & Nymph, cattle & Landse C[anvas] Rubens’; 4'10" x 6'8").

REFERENCES
Cat. 1817, p. 9, no. 146 (‘SECOND ROOM – East Side; A Shepherd and Shepherdess; Rubens’); Haydon 1817, p. 384, no. 146;³ Cat. 1820, p. 9, no. 146; Cat. 1830, no. 162; Jameson 1842, ii, p. 468, no. 162 (Rubens);⁴ Denning 1858 and 1859, no. 162;⁵ Lavice 1867, p. 181 (Rubens no. 5);⁶ Sparkes 1876, p. 150 (Rubens);⁷ Richter & Sparkes 1880, p. 85, no. 162 (Jordaens);⁸ Richter & Sparkes 1892 and 1905, p. 31, no. 123; Cook 1914, pp. xx, 72, no. 123 (School of Rubens);⁹ Cook 1926, p. 68; Cat. 1953, p. 35; Murray 1980a, p. 299 (School of Rubens); Beresford 1998, p. 238 (attributed to Jan Thomas); Jonker & Bergvelt 2016, pp. 268–9 (attributed to Jan Thomas); RKD, no. 283807: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/283807 (Dec. 2, 2019).

TECHNICAL NOTES
Plain-weave linen canvas. Glue-paste lined. The edges of the painting are filled and retouched. The ground of the painting is tending to blister, but the condition of the paint film itself is reasonable: the paint has been flattened due to lining, but there is no cupping. Some areas have suffered abrasion due to past overcleaning, for example the flesh and the white drapery. Fairly widespread retouching was carried out during the recent restoration, particularly in the figures, due to the disruptive nature of the wear and cracks. Previous recorded treatment: mid-19th century, lined and re-stretched on new stretcher; 2005, cleaned and retouched, N. Ryder.

RELATED WORKS
1a) Jan Thomas, The Sleeping Diana, panel, 34.5 x 49.5 cm. Louvre, Paris, M.I. 973 [1].¹⁰
1b) Jan Thomas, Venus and Adonis as Lovers (formerly Cephalus and Procris), panel, 41 x 68.8 cm. Present whereabouts unknown (Bonhams, 5 Dec. 2007, lot 9, with previous provenance) [2].¹¹
1c) Jan Thomas, St Sebastian, panel, 83 x 61 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers, 366 [3].¹²
1d) Jan Thomas, Bacchus and Ariadne, canvas, 111 x 94 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, Bx E 264.¹³
1e) Jan Thomas, A Landscape with Shepherds and Shepherdesses resting beneath a Tree, canvas, 52.7 x 68 cm. Present whereabouts unknown (Bonhams, 9 Dec. 2009, lot 39).¹⁴
1f) Jan Thomas, St Sebastian succoured by St Irene, oil on paper, mounted as a drawing, 27.7 x 38.8 cm. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, WA1863.287.¹⁵
1g) Jan Thomas, Judith and Holofernes, signed and dated Joannes Tomas fecit 1654, canvas, 130 x 165 cm. Galerie Jan de Maere, Brussels (27 Jan. 2012).
2) Jacques Jordaens I, Mercury and Argus, canvas, 202 x 241 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, H 679 [4].¹⁶
3a) Peter Paul Rubens, Pastoral Scene (Coridon and Silvia), c. 1638–9, panel, 162.3 x 134.5 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 328 [5].¹⁷
3b) (School of) Peter Paul Rubens and Osias Beert I, Pausias and Glycera (A Scholar inspired by Nature?), c. 1610–20, canvas, 203.2 x 194.3 cm. The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Fla., SN 219.¹⁸
4) Jan van den Hoecke, Pastoral Scene (Granida and Daifilo?), canvas, 169.5 x 235.6 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, P.Y.24; Inv. 1211; M.R. 1005.¹⁹
5a) Pieter Crijnse Volmarijn, Offering to Pan, panel, 38.5 x 32 cm. Present whereabouts unknown (private collection, Charlottenburg, 1933).²⁰
5b) Pieter Crijnse Volmarijn, The Lovesick Woman, panel, 33 x 31.5 cm. Present whereabouts unknown (M. J. Goudstikker, Amsterdam, 1928).²¹
6a) Jacques Jordaens, Shepherd, with a Shepherdess pouring out Milk, black chalk, watercolour and bodycolour, 30 x 44.2 cm. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1200 [6].²²
6b) (modello for no. 6c) Jacques Jordaens, Declaration of Love in a Landscape, pen and brown ink, brown and grey wash, heightened with bodycolour over a sketch in black chalk, retraced, 29.3 x 28.3 mm. Albertina, Vienna, 8462.²³
6c) Jacob Neefs after Jacques Jordaens (6b), Coridon and Silvia, engraving, 33.2 (trimmed) x 30 cm. BM, London, 1875,0710.449.²⁴
7) William Holman Hunt, The Hireling Shepherd, 1851, canvas, 76.4 x 109.5 cm. City Art Gallery, Manchester, 1896.29 [7].²⁵
8) Genius, colossal Roman statue, over 4 m. high. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples [8].²⁶

DPG123
attributed to Jan Thomas
Bucolic Couple
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG123

1
Jan Thomas
Sleeping Diana
Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv./cat.nr. M.I. 973

2
Jan Thomas
Venus and Adonis as lovers
Geneva, private collection Lucien Baszanger

3
Jan Thomas
St Sebastian
Angers, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers, inv./cat.nr. MBA-J366J1881P

The authorship of DPG123 is problematic. Its first recorded appearance may be in 1795 in a sale of the collection of Noel Desenfans’ friend Charles-Alexandre de Calonne (1734–1802; Controller-General of Finances in France 1783–7), where it was attributed to Jacques Jordaens I (1593–1678). It was then on the London art market before appearing in the 1813 inventory of Sir Francis Bourgeois’ collection, attributed to Rubens. A feature related to Jordaens is the cows seen from behind, as in his Mercury and Argus in Lyon (Related works, no. 2) [4]. Jordaens used the subject of DPG123 in a drawing in Berlin (Related works, no. 6a) [6], where the woman pours milk out of a vessel. The theme of the couple can be found, with some variations, in a picture by Rubens in Munich, which is according to Renger a scene of Coridon and Silvia (Related works, no. 3a) [5] – the reason why DPG123 was ascribed to Rubens, or his school. In 1997 Hans Vlieghe tentatively suggested an attribution to Jan Thomas,²⁷ noting similarities with a painting of Bacchus and Ariadne in Bordeaux (Related works, no. 1d), a suggestion also made by Arnout Balis (oral communication, 1997).

It is difficult to get a clear idea of Thomas’s style. His works and those of other pupils of Rubens, including Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert (1613/14–54), Jan Boeckhorst (1604/5–68) and Abraham van Diepenbeeck (1596–1675), are often confused. The figure types are not consistent with those of the Thomas / Willeboirts Bosschaert / Boeckhorst / Van Diepenbeeck group. Comparison with the Bacchus and Ariadne in Bordeaux (Related works, no. 1d) is not convincing, as that has more in common, in the Mannerist treatment of the figures, with the work of Pieter Crijnse Volmarijn (1629–79), a Rotterdam follower of Jordaens (Related works, nos 5a, 5b). Closest to DPG123 is a St Sebastian in Angers (Related works, no. 1c) [3]: the modelling of the very Rubenesque saint is close to that of the man, and the landscape in both paintings looks like the landscapes of Jan Wildens (1584/6–1653), as in many paintings of the ‘Thomas’ group. The face of the woman seems to have only a slight similarity to that of Judith in a painting by Jan Thomas (Related works, no. 1g). A small correspondence is that between the glistening metal of the milk vessel in DPG123 and the armour in the St Sebastian; that is traditionally attributed to Jordaens, but a photograph in the RKD bears the annotation ‘Thomas’ by B. A. Renckens. Between DPG123 and a Pastoral Scene in Valenciennes (Related works, no. 4) there are close similarities in the figures of the man, and some in the figures of the women. The complexity of the œuvres of Rubens’s pupils is clearly displayed here: the most recent attribution of this painting on the Joconde website is to Jan van den Hoecke (1611–51), but it was earlier given to Boeckhorst, Theodoor van Thulden (1606–69) and Van Diepenbeeck. While ‘Unknown pupil of Jordaens’ would be a safer attribution for DPG123, Vlieghe’s and Balis’s attribution to Thomas is worth consideration.

The traditional title of DPG123, A Shepherd and Shepherdess, needs to be re-thought. The woman’s yellow silk dress is unlikely to have been worn by a shepherdess, and the man’s costume is quite extravagant, consisting of animal skins and unusual boots with ornamental hare heads – similar to those of an Antique statue (Related works, no. 8) [8] – suggesting that the painting was intended to illustrate some Arcadian tale. There are some light provocative elements, such as the pole in the hand of the woman (as in Rubens’s painting in Munich), the phallic spout of the vessel, and the pipes of the bagpipe behind the man.

In Classical literature two figures like these are often called Coridon and Silvia.²⁸ The theme was quite popular in 16th- and 17th-century art: there are prints by Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), Jacob Matham (1571–1631) and Crispijn de Passe I (1564–1637), which might have influenced both Rubens and his pupils, including the artist of DPG123. In the Northern Netherlands the theme was often treated by the Utrecht School, in both paintings and prints. Silvia is often called a courtesan, which would explain the phallic elements in DPG123.²⁹

Mrs Jameson noted that a similar picture appeared in the posthumous inventory of Rubens’s collection, but that was probably the painting by Rubens now in Munich, once in the collection of Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange (1584–1647).³⁰

In the 19th century William Holman Hunt (1827–1910) showed that the Pre-Raphaelites were inspired not only by Italian paintings made before the time of Raphael (1483–1520) but also, sometimes, by 17th-century Flemish ones, as Cook had already noted in 1914 (Related works, no. 7) [7].

6
Jacques Jordaens
Shepherd, with a Shepherdess pouring out Milk
Berlin (city, Germany), Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, inv./cat.nr. 1200

8
Anonymous, Roman
Genius
marble
Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

7
William Holman Hunt
The Hireling Shepherd, dated 1851
Manchester, Manchester City Art Gallery, inv./cat.nr. 1896.29