2006.33: A Cooper

Jacob van Strij, together with his older brother, Abraham, are often considered the chief emulators and interpreters of Aelbert Cuyp—their predecessor in Dordrecht—during the Golden Age revival that took place during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Jacob was apprenticed in Antwerp with Andries Lens (1739–1822) and completed two years at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten there in 1776. Best known for his landscape paintings, Jacob also found enthusiasm for his drawings among collectors of his day, including Jan Danser Nijman. The painful gout in the artist’s hands made his artistic accomplishments all the more praiseworthy.¹

The Dordrecht drawing society Pictura, founded in part by Abraham in 1774 and awarded official status by the city in 1787, served Dordrecht’s artistic community as a regular gathering site. Drawing two or three evenings a week after drawings and prints, plaster casts, and live, clothed models remained the primary function of Pictura; beginning in 1792, the society sponsored an annual drawing competition among its members. Jacob, in particular, used the society to promote the art of the past, lecturing in 1797 on painting of the ancients, and organizing in 1799 an art viewing dedicated to earlier Dutch masters and their excellent imitation of nature.² In an era saturated with decorative interior painting, portraits, and topographical views, such sentiment reflects an overwhelming desire for a return to a more energetic artistic milieu.³

Jacob’s fine watercolor of a cooper blends both the drawing practices and aesthetic goals advocated by Pictura. The seated pose and unexpressive face of the man betray this drawing’s origin as a figure study, which Jacob transformed into a finished object with the addition of barrel staves and a courtyard setting. The same model, with drooping skin and thinner hair, appears again in one of Abraham’s finished watercolors depicting a seated man with a tankard and pipe, signed and dated 1816 (Fig. 1).⁴ Such subjects were inspired by the watercolors of Adriaen van Ostade and his successor, Cornelis Dusart, whose finished drawings of single figures also combined figure study and peasant genre (Fig. 2).⁵ Both Jacob and Abraham produced finished drawings of laborers in this vein, but their relatively staid compositions departed from traditional representations of itinerant merchants, typically showing them ballyhooing their wares in the streets.⁶ As one Pictura member lectured in 1799, drawing from the clothed model served well the purposes of composing scenes of everyday life and landscape staffage—the preferred taste of the day, and a taste that elevated similar subjects of the Golden Age over lofty history painting.⁷

Notes

¹ Roeland van Eijnden and Adriaan van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der Vaderlandsche Schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw (Haarlem, 1816–40), vol. 2, pp. 414–20; Floor de Graaf in Charles Dumas et al., In helder licht: Abraham en Jacob van Strij; Hollandse meesters van landschap en interieur omstreeks 1800 (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Dordrechts Museum; Enschede, Netherlands: Rijksmuseum Twenthe, 2000), pp. 17–22; J. Erkelens, “De gebroeders Abraham en Jacob van Strij: Een biografie van twee Dordtse schilders,” Oud Holland, vol. 90, no. 3 (1976): 186–200.

² For more on Pictura and figure study in the Netherlands during the eighteenth century, see R. J. A. te Rijdt, Nederlandse figuurstudies 1700-1850: 5 februari-1 mei 1994. Rijksprentenkabinet / Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Vouwblad, no. 25 (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet, 1994), especially the section dedicated to “Dordrecht-Pictura.” Art viewings (kunstbeschouwingen) were typically held in a collector’s home for a small circle of fellow enthusiasts whose participants studied and enjoyed works of art while fueled by food, drink, and tobacco. See Michiel C. Plomp, Hartstochtelijk verzameld: 18de‑eeuwse Hollandse verzamelaars van tekeningen en hun collecties (Paris and Bussum, Netherlands, 2001), pp. 101–4. Jacob’s viewing at Pictura brought the private enjoyment of art into an increasingly formal sphere.

³ Erkelens, p. 187; B. Jintes in J. Alleblas, B. Jintes and P. Schotel, Was getekend Dordrecht: Stad en omgeving vereeuwigd door leden van Pictura 1780–1960 (Zwolle and Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1988), pp. 7–13; Willem Frijhoff, Hubert Nusteling and Mariejke Spies, Geschiedenis van Dordrecht van 1572 tot 1813 (Hilversum, Netherlands, 1998), pp. 392–93; Knolle and Geerts in Dumas et al., pp. 213–21.

⁴ Abraham van Strij, Seated Man with a Tankard and Pipe (Fig. 1). Transparent watercolor, brown ink, and graphite, 324 × 269 mm. Netherlands, Private Collection.

⁵ See, for example, Adriaen van Ostade’s small watercolors of seated peasants drinking or smoking, as in Bernhard Schnackenburg, Adriaen van Ostade, Isack van Ostade: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle (Hamburg, 1981), cats. 298 and 299. See also Dusart’s single figures placed in a finished setting, such as his Seated Man Reading (Fig. 2), 1690; transparent watercolor, black ink, and black and red chalk over graphite on parchment, 226 × 178 mm; last known with Douwes Fine Art, Amsterdam.

⁶ Robert-Jan te Rijdt in Dumas et al., pp. 140 and 169–71.

⁷ Cornelis van Braam, cited in Dumas et al., p. 217.