Bulletin 13, 1969

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Reflections on the Jordaens Exhibition

by Michael Jaffe

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Drawings Hors Catalogue

Three drawings were exhibited hors catalogue:
 
h. c. A 

STUDY FOR THE COOK IN "THE KING DRINKS" (fig. 17)

Red, black and white chalks, on white paper. Watermark, foolscap.
175 x 140 mm., 6 7/8 x 5 1/2 in.
PHOT. The lender.
PROV. Acquired 1951 by Miss Dorothy Cogswell from Louis Meier, London; presented by her to the College, 1964.
LIT. Unpublished.
EXH. Never exhibited.

A. E. Popham was the first to recognize this as a preparation by Jordaens for a background figure in what was perhaps the final version of a favourite theme in painting, the picture listed as No. 117 in the 1659 Inventory of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Cat. 1963, no. 225, pl. 71; canvas, 24.2 x 30 cm., 9 17/32 x 11 13/16 in. The drawing may be dated with the painting, shortly before 1656.
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass.

h. c. B    

THE DEATH OF CLEOPATRA (fig. 18)

Red and black chalks, rose and brown washes, pen and brown ink, on white paper. Watermark: (?-) BD.; recto, marks of Prince W. Argoutinsky-Dolgoroukoff (L. Suppl. 2602.2) and A. G. B. Russell (L. Suppl. 2770.a); verso, pen: geteeken 25 April 1662 / Cleopatra laet haer van een / Slange stechen, dar br sterfi / Ter liefde van Antonius & / Om niet te vallen inde hande Ivan Pompeius (by Jordaens); Bacch. Scene of Death of Cleopatra/from Coll of Sir A. Westcombe (English nineteenth-century hand); Jordaens of Antwerp (English mid-eighteenth-century hand, presumably that of Westcombe)
.
196 x 284 mm., 7 11/16 x 11 3/16 in. PHOT. Thelender.
PROV. Sir Anthony Westcombe, Bt. (t 1752), L. 202; Prince Wladimir Argoutinsky-Dolgoroukoff (1875-1951) Sale, London (Sotheby's), 4 July 1923, no.62; Archibald G. B. Russell (b. 1879); Mrs. Caroline Hill; her bequest to the College, 19 October 1965.

LIT. d'Hulst 1956, NO. 174, pp. 288, 392², 423 (without notice of the inscription on the verso, and with incomplete provenance).

EXH. Never exhibited.

In this splendid drawing, dated by Jordaens himself 25 April 1662, the theme established nine years earlier by him in the Kassel painting [No. 107] is developed further. The purpose, as d'Hulst suggests, was probably to prepare the design for a tapestry (to our knowledge never completed) for the suite of FAMOUS WOMEN OF ANTIQUITY. The drawing at Besançon [No. 249] was seen to be not "a composition trial, at a fairly early stage for the Kassel Museum painting" (as stated in the catalogue), but a retrial of the composition in broader form after the Kassel painting and before this Mount Holyoke drawing. The treatment of the background with an elaborately scrolled bed-head and the position of the old woman are features common to both the Besançon and Mount Holyoke drawings. The development in the latter of the decorative background of hangings and herms reinforces the probability that after 1653 Jordaens was designing this subject specifically for a tapestry rather than a painting.
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass.

h. c. C    

THE WIFE OF JEROBOAM, KING OF ISRAEL, VISITS IN DISGUISE THE BLIND PROPHET AHIJAH (I KINGS XIV, 1-16) (not reproduced)
Pen and brown ink and water-colour washes, and white gouache over indications in black chalk, on white paper laid down on card. Inscribed by Jordaens, pen, Regum 14 jeroboams wyf compt verhuldt in vreemde gedaente aen den Propheet / Ahia Raet te vragen over haeren sicken Sone. De Propheet blindt sittende in huys / Kendt haer ongeluck.
308 x 275 mm., 12 1/8 x 10 9/16 in.
PROV. Convent of the Unshod Carmelites, Bruges. LIT. van Purvelde, p. 186; d'Hulst 1956; No. 177, pp. 289, 393 (the inscription incompletely transcribed), pl. 188.
EXH. Amsterdam, Master drawings exhibited by Bernard Houthakker, 1968, No.25.

The modello for one of five subjects recorded to have been prepared by Jordaens for a tapestry suite of THE HISTORY OF JEROBOAM. Amongst the group of thirty cartoons for tapestry listed in the possession of the Antwerp dealer Michael Wauters on 26 August 1679, and which he had acquired ten months previously from Jordaens's estate, was "item, daer de vrouv van Jeroboam by den Propheet compt" (F. J. Van den Branden, Verzamelingen van Schilderijen te Antwerpen, Antwerpsch Archievenblad, XXII, p. 32). There is no record of the tapestry's having been executed. The drawing cannot be precisely dated; but it hung in the exhibition appropriately between No. 269 and No. 270 and is datable C. 1660.
Mr. Bernard Houthakker, Amsterdam NOTES

Tapestries

281 For {cf. Nos. 282, 283} read {cf Nos. 280, 282}.

Prints

286 Physical description: add Inscribed, et.fec., ink.

297 The 1628 altarpiece is illustrated {fig. XVI}.

300 The Louvre painting is No. 49.

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