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Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne (Delft 1589 – 1662 The Hague) A Cavalier at his dressing table with a servant holding a mirror signed, dated and inscribed lower right: 1631/Adri. v. Venne/Haga comit Provenance: Exhibited: Literature: By Meredith Hale In this beautiful grisaille by Adriaen van de Venne a soldier in a state of half dress sits in a dishevelled interior. His jacket is unbuttoned, his boots are unlaced, and his hat lies on the floor where it was thrown the night before. He looks intently at the viewer and holds a ring conspicuously with both hands. A second ring lies on the floor next to a woman’s lace collar, seemingly discarded in haste and now lying vulnerably at the man’s feet. An empty wine glass sits on the ledge at the left and a chamber pot has been indecorously left out beside the bed, all suggestive of the kind of evening that has taken place. Things from the lady’s dressing table—a ribbon and a powder brush—are strewn carelessly on the floor and the soldier now occupies her chair in a parody of the beautifying ritual. His suit has been successful and he now takes, it would seem, his second reward, as his first remains fast asleep behind the bed curtains. The chronology of van de Venne’s oeuvre has proved difficult to establish but he seems to have painted the majority of his grisailles after his move from Middelburg to The Hague in 1625, when his interest shifted from landscapes to city scenes.1 He mostly painted colourful landscapes within the Flemish tradition before 1625, some such as Fishing for Souls (1614, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) with explicit political content, revealing van de Venne in the role of critic from early in his career. As exemplified by A cavalier at his dressing table, the majority of his grisailles are broadly painted satirical images with moralistic messages often conveyed explicitly in the form of mottos written on fluttering banderoles. Although no motto accompanies this scene, the message is clear: excess comes to no good and lack of prudence will reap its just reward. A pendant pair painted around the same time addresses the theme of excess and deception more explicitly. In Wealth leads to Luxury and Poverty leads to Cunning, an overdressed and drunken young couple stroll exaggeratedly through a landscape oblivious to the world inhabited by the old couple who have resorted to feigning blindness and begging in their sister image.2 With works such as these, van de Venne exposed the gulf in Dutch society between rich and poor and emphasised the idea that privilege requires responsibility. Paintings such as these, however, go beyond smug moralising; they are acute criticisms of what van de Venne seemed to consider the injustices and contradictions of his society. It has been suggested that our painting may also originally have had a pendant. It was sold in a Milan sale in 1884 together with a scene of beggars making music, (now in the Weldon Collection, New York). Edwin Buijsen, however, has suggested Lady at her Toilet (formerly Six Collection, Amsterdam) as a more likely pendant.3 Van de Venne did not limit his use of grisaille to satire or the depiction of social injustice. He also painted historical subjects, including a portrait of the “Winter King and Queen” with Frederick Hendrick and Amalia van Solms (1626, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) and Christian IV of Denmark as Pacifier (1643, Helsingør, Kronborg Slot), in this technique. The limited palette of the grisaille emphasises the virtuosity of van de Venne’s draughtsmanship and painting technique, as seen in passages such as the sash falling from the chair and the lace collar on the ground in A cavalier at his dressing table. Cornelis de Bie’s account of van de Venne in his Het Gulden Cabinet (1661) is the only contemporary source of information on the artist’s youth and training.4 According to de Bie, he was born to parents from the southern Netherlands who had fled to Delft to escape the war. Van de Venne’s early study of Latin apparently inspired him to become an illustrator and he is said to have received partial instruction from an obscure Leiden goldsmith, Simon de Valck. His second teacher, Hieronymus van Diest, is equally unknown but may, significantly, have painted grisailles. Van de Venne’s father and brother are recorded in Middelburg as early as 1605 and Adriaen himself is recorded there from 1614-24. Much of his work as a book illustrator and print designer took place during this Middelburg period, when he worked closely with his brother Jan. His illustrations accompanied the first publications of Jacob Cats and contributed to the popularity of emblem books. From 1618 he also designed prints on a larger scale, such as portraits of Prince Maurits and Frederick Hendrick engraved in 1618 by Willem Jacobsz. Delff and purchased by the States General. Several works, particularly the album of 105 miniatures now in the British Museum suggest that he may have been employed by the House of Orange or the court of the Winter King and Queen. Van de Venne produced his own literary works, including his Tafereel van de belacchende werelt (Picture of the Ridiculous World), during his time in The Hague and served several times as deacon and once as dean in the city’s St. Luke’s guild. He was one of the founders of Pictura, the artists’ confraternity established in The Hague in 1665. He had married in 1614 and had two sons who were also painters, Pieter (1624-57), a still life specialist, and Huybrecht (1635-c.76), who, according to de Bie, painted in his father’s style, although none of his works are known today. 1 Scholars disagree on the date of van de Venne’s earliest grisailles. Bol argues that one of his earliest paintings, The Nose Grinder dated 1612, is a grisaille while Plokker, supported by Royalton-Kisch dates his earliest grisailles to 1621. See L. Bol, Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne: Painter and Draughtsman (1989), p. 78, A. Plokker, Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne (1589-1662): de grisailles met spreukbanden (Leuven, 1984), nos. 1, 56, 57, and M. Royalton-Kisch, “Adriaen van de Venne,” in The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 26/5/2003) <http: //www.groveart.com>. 2 These paintings (both in a private collection) are unusual in that they are more brightly coloured than his grisailles of this period—from a thematic and iconographic point of view, however, they belong without doubt to this group.
3 Buijsen, who is writing a catalogue raisonné of the works of van de Venne, offered this suggestion in a recent sale catalogue. See Sotheby’s: Old Master Paintings (Amsterdam, 13 May 2003), cat no. 20. 4 See Martin Royalton-Kisch’s excellent discussion of van de Venne’s life and work cited above.
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