DIRCK VAN DELEN (Heuseden 1605 – 1671 Arnemuiden)

Interior of an Imaginary Church with Figures  

signed and dated middle right: D van Delen a 1629
oil on panel
15 ¾ x 23 1/8 inches (40 x 59 cm.)

Provenance:
Count Harrach collection, Vienna, as Hendrick Arts; sold by the Harrachschen Gemäldegalerie, Jnauary 11, 1949

Literature:
Herman Ritschl, Katalog de Harrach Graflichen Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, 1926, cat. no. 371, as on “Architekturstuck
Timothy Trent Blade, The Paintings of Dirck van Delen, University of Minnesota, dissertation, 1976, p.217, no. 22
Thieme-Becker, vol. IX, p. 12
H. Jantzen, Das niederländische Architekturbild, 1910; reprint, Braunschweig 1979, p. 221, no. 106

Dirck van Delen was born in 1604 or 1605 in Heusden, a small village near ‘s Hertogenbosch.  In August of 1625 he was living in Middleburg when he announced his betrothal to Maria van der Gracht, who was sixteen years his senior and the daughter of a burgomaster of Arnemuiden, a small town nearby.  In 1628 he succeeded his father-in-law as burgomaster and was referred to as such in documents of 1651-58 and 1668-71. He also served as Consul of Zeeland.  There has been speculation about his teacher, who has sometimes been assumed to have been the little known Hendrick Aerts (Arts); Van Delen copied a print after the latter’s art (see Hans Jantzen, Das Niederländische Architekturbild, 1909, 2nd ed. 1979, p. 67; and the authors of the exh. cat. Rotterdam, Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Perspectives, 1991, p. 97).  However Bernard Vermet observed that none of Aerts’s works can be shown to postdate 1603, by which time Vermet believes that this painter from Malines had moved to Danzig (“Tableaux de Dirck van Delen, c.1604/05-1671 dans les musées français,” in Revue du Louvre, vol. 3, June 1995, p. 32). Another candidate for Van Delen’s teacher is Jan Steenwijk the Younger (c.1580-before 1649), whose influence and that of the circle of architectural painters in Antwerp who followed Hans (1527-before1609) and Paul (1567-before1636) Vredeman de Vries is very clear on Van Delen’s first manner.  The earliest works by Van Delen are dated 1626 and 1627 (however, see the painting from the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig, the date on which is sometimes read as 1623; exh. Rotterdam 1991, no. 11) and already addresses his favorite architectural subjects,
Dirck van Delen, Page 2

views of palaces and church interiors.  (On Van Delen’s oeuvre, see Timothy Trent Blade, The Paintings of Dirck van Delen, University of Minnesota, dissertation, 1976.)

Most of Van Delen’s paintings from the 1620’s feature dark, rather rigid and angular, Renaissance-style architecture and usually include a vanishing point exactly in the middle of the painting.  Rarely would he attempt asymmetrical views in his early works.  During the 1630’s he abandoned the opaque browns and blacks of his first manner, introducing more subtle and transparent hues as well as greater tonal control.  From this point onward he would attempt to convey the range of the colors of marble gray-greens, tawny browns, light yellow, and a pale rose.  The majority of his mature paintings are scenes of palaces, often with courtyards and grand loggia, but he continued to paint imaginary church interiors while increasingly abandoning the Renaissance and Gothic styles for a Baroque or Classical order.

Van Delen joined the Middleburg guild in 1639 and was a member for many years thereafter.  During the 1640s, the decade in which the present work was executed, Van Delen crafted a more monumental, simpler, cubic style, which was at once more somber and more coherent architecturally.  The artist’s first wife died in 1650 and he subsequently married two more times, leaving a memorial to his three spouses that is preserved in the Town Hall in Arnemuiden.  Van Delen was in Antwerp in 1668 and 1669 and joined the Rhetoricians’ chamber there known as the Olyftak.  His spouses’ monument confirms that he died on May 16, 1671 at age 66.  The inventory of his possessions not only attests to the fact that he had prospered in his careers, but also suggests that he was a well read gentleman who claimed more than two hundred volumes in his library, including classical as well as Dutch and French literature, history, theology, and a substantial collection of drawings and prints.

In a Viennese private collection since it was sold by the famous Harrach Galerie, this painting can once again be admired as a superb example of Van Delen’s craft. As with many of the artist’s paintings, it is assumed that another master added the figures. However, the style in which the figures are painted is consistent with many other paintings by Van Delen, and there is no reason to speculate that they are by another hand.