Attributed to Pieter Quast (1605-1647)
Attributed to Pieter Quast (1605-1647)
Northern Netherlandish, The Hague or Amsterdam, circa 1635-1645
Relief with the Five Senses
polychromed terracotta
23 by 30cm., 9 by 11¾in.
Catalogue Note:
Pieter Jansz. Quast was born in 1609 in Amsterdam, but spent a substantial part of his short career in The Hague, where he was a member of the Guild of Saint Luke and married a local woman in 1638. There, he was the tutor of the young Prince William II, the son of Frederik Hendrik, whose surviving drawings bear a strong resemblance to Quast's work. Quast specialized in painting, engraving, and drawing figures from everyday life. He placed farmers, beggars, quacks, and drunkards in compromising situations to humorously illustrate what was considered moral and immoral at the time. A Hague notary's report suggests that Quast himself was not of impeccable character either: he once held a knife to the throat of a church notable who accused Quast's wife, whether falsely or not, and threatened to kill him. Apart from his unusual behavior, Quast was also one of the few painters of the Golden Age to venture into sculpture. The Rijksmuseum owns a gilded terracotta relief of two fighting men, held apart by spectators, which strongly resembles the above scene from Quast's own life. It is signed: P. Quast and dated 1628 on a violin lying in the foreground.
In an article in the Rijksmuseum Bulletin from 1966, Jaap Leeuwenberg attributed two further reliefs representing the Five Senses to Quast on the basis of the signed Fight between two men: one terracotta relief with badly damaged edges in Museum the Lakenhal in Leiden and a relief in wood in what is now the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.1 A terracotta relief representing the Flagellation in Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht was attributed to Quast more recently by Micha Leeflang.2 The resemblances between the general conception of the reliefs, such as the size and the lower edge with a ledge designed to accommodate a frame, and the style of the figures -note especially the style of the flowing drapery, the hats and the near-identical small dog in the Fight and the Jerusalem Five Senses- suggest Leeuwenberg and Leeflang had a strong case. The present relief is a further version of the Jerusalem relief which Leeuwenberg attributed to Quast and cements this composition's connection to him further because it is skilfully polychromed, as one might expect from a painter. Furthermore, it proves that the Jerusalem Five Senses was also made in terracotta, which seems to have been the material Pieter Quast preferred for sculpture.
1 Leeuwenberg, op. cit. Museum de Lakenhal: inv. no. B 27; Another version of the Lakenhal relief is in the Science Museum in London, catalogued as German, 18th century, inv. No. A27810.
2 Leeflang, op. cit.
RELATED LITERATURE
M. Leeflang, ‘Een uniek terracotta reliëf’, Catharijnebrief. Magazine van Museum Catharijneconvent 98, no. 3, 2008, pp. 8-9;
J. Leeuwenberg, ‘Beeldhouwwerk van de schilder Pieter Quast’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 14, 1966, pp. 60-64.
Provenance:
Private collection, France
Attributed to Pieter Quast (1605-1647)
Northern Netherlandish, The Hague or Amsterdam, circa 1635-1645
Relief with the Five Senses
polychromed terracotta
23 by 30cm., 9 by 11¾in.
Catalogue Note:
Pieter Jansz. Quast was born in 1609 in Amsterdam, but spent a substantial part of his short career in The Hague, where he was a member of the Guild of Saint Luke and married a local woman in 1638. There, he was the tutor of the young Prince William II, the son of Frederik Hendrik, whose surviving drawings bear a strong resemblance to Quast's work. Quast specialized in painting, engraving, and drawing figures from everyday life. He placed farmers, beggars, quacks, and drunkards in compromising situations to humorously illustrate what was considered moral and immoral at the time. A Hague notary's report suggests that Quast himself was not of impeccable character either: he once held a knife to the throat of a church notable who accused Quast's wife, whether falsely or not, and threatened to kill him. Apart from his unusual behavior, Quast was also one of the few painters of the Golden Age to venture into sculpture. The Rijksmuseum owns a gilded terracotta relief of two fighting men, held apart by spectators, which strongly resembles the above scene from Quast's own life. It is signed: P. Quast and dated 1628 on a violin lying in the foreground.
In an article in the Rijksmuseum Bulletin from 1966, Jaap Leeuwenberg attributed two further reliefs representing the Five Senses to Quast on the basis of the signed Fight between two men: one terracotta relief with badly damaged edges in Museum the Lakenhal in Leiden and a relief in wood in what is now the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.1 A terracotta relief representing the Flagellation in Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht was attributed to Quast more recently by Micha Leeflang.2 The resemblances between the general conception of the reliefs, such as the size and the lower edge with a ledge designed to accommodate a frame, and the style of the figures -note especially the style of the flowing drapery, the hats and the near-identical small dog in the Fight and the Jerusalem Five Senses- suggest Leeuwenberg and Leeflang had a strong case. The present relief is a further version of the Jerusalem relief which Leeuwenberg attributed to Quast and cements this composition's connection to him further because it is skilfully polychromed, as one might expect from a painter. Furthermore, it proves that the Jerusalem Five Senses was also made in terracotta, which seems to have been the material Pieter Quast preferred for sculpture.
1 Leeuwenberg, op. cit. Museum de Lakenhal: inv. no. B 27; Another version of the Lakenhal relief is in the Science Museum in London, catalogued as German, 18th century, inv. No. A27810.
2 Leeflang, op. cit.
RELATED LITERATURE
M. Leeflang, ‘Een uniek terracotta reliëf’, Catharijnebrief. Magazine van Museum Catharijneconvent 98, no. 3, 2008, pp. 8-9;
J. Leeuwenberg, ‘Beeldhouwwerk van de schilder Pieter Quast’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 14, 1966, pp. 60-64.
Provenance:
Private collection, France
