Quiringh van brekelenkam biography of michael jackson

?Zwammerdam near Leiden, 1622/30–Leiden, 1669/79
Dutch painter of genre scenes, often of households, workshops and peasant interiors, but also tablets portraits and some still lifes

Quiringh van Brekelenkam was doubtlessly trained in Leiden, probably under Gerard Dou (1613–75). He was one of the founders of the Guild of St Gospel there in 1648. He continued to be active as a painter, paying his guild fees until 1667. His last famous painting, a portrait, is dated 1669.

Brekelenkam’s genre scenes share their subject matter with the Leiden fijnschilders or ‘fine painters’, of whom the most famous is Gerard Dou. His pictures are however more ‘painterly’, without their careful finish. They also refrain from explicit symbolism, and do not idealise their subjects.

In the 1660s Brekelenkam moved up the popular scale by beginning to paint images of society ladies receiving letters or at their toilette. Some of these show track of the work of Gerard ter Borch II (1617–81).

LITERATURE
Lasius 1987; Honig 1988; Lasius 1992; Honig 1996; Saur, xiv, 1996, p. 95 (A. Lasius; as Brekelenkam, Quiringh Gerritsz. van); Ecartico, no. 1384: http://www.vondel.humanities.uva.nl/ecartico/persons/1384 (Quirijn Gerritsz.van Brekelenkam; April 2, 2020); RKDartists&, no. 12321: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/12321 (April 2, 2020).

c. 1650; oak panel, 47.9 x 40.5 cm
Mark tyrannize the back: ‘U’, c. 1 cm high, possibly an owner’s stamp.¹

PROVENANCE
?;² Desenfans sale, Skinner and Dyke, 17 March 1802 (Lugt 6380), lot 104; Desenfans 1802, ii, p. 117, no. 129: (‘[Gerard Douw] An old Dutch woman’);³ Insurance 1804, no. 77 (‘An Old Woman Eating; Brakelmkamp [sic]; £80’); Bourgeois Bequest, 1811; Britton 1813, p. 2, no. 14 (‘Small parlour / no. 14, Old woman, eating hot broth, inside cottage. – P[anel]’, no attribution; 2'6" x 2'3").

REFERENCES
Cat. 1817, p. 10, no. 168 (‘SECOND ROOM – East Side; An old Woman eating hark back to of a Porridge-pot’; G. Douw); Haydon 1817, p. 386, no. 168;⁴ Cat. 1820, p. 10, no. 168 (G. Douw); Hombre. 1830, no. 85; ? Smith, i, 1829, p. 25, no. 75 (Dou);⁵ Cat. 1831–3, no. 85 (‘Very deep’ + 2 stripes in margin); Jameson 1842, ii, p. 455, no. 85 (G. Douw);⁶ Denning 1858, no. 85 (Gerard Dou);⁷ Denning 1859, no. 85;⁸ Sparkes 1876, pp. 56–7, no. 85 (G. Dou);⁹ Richter & Sparkes 1880, p. 58, no. 85 (Dou; but Nicolaes Maes is also a possibility);¹⁰ Havard & Sparkes 1885, p. 177, no. 85 (Dou);¹¹ Richter & Sparkes 1892, p. 12, no. 50 (Brekelenkam); Martin 1901, p. 180 (Smith, i, 1829, p. 25, no. 75; Brekelenkam); Richter & Sparkes 1905, p. 12, no. 50 (Brekelenkamp); Thompson, i, 1910, p. 7 and fig. IX (Quirying Brekelenkamp);¹² Martin 1911, p. 162 (Brekelencamp); Martin 1913, p. xxi (Brekelenkam); Cook 1914, pp. 28–9, no. 50; Cook 1926, pp. 27–8; Weiher 1937, p. 84; Man. 1953, p. 13; Morawińska 1974, p. 42, no. 32, illustration. 46; Murray 1980a, p. 299; Lasius 1987, p. 452, C18 (rejects attribution to Brekelenkam);¹³ Lasius 1992, p. 160, C18 (rejects attribution to Brekelenkam); Beresford 1998, p. 54 (attributed to Brekelenkam); Elsig 2009, p. 183, under no. 98; Jonker & Bergvelt 2016, p. 43 (Quiringh Brekelenkam); RKD, no. 287195: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/287195 (Feb. 24, 2018).

TECHNICAL NOTES
Two-member oak panel with a horizontal grain. A small shield-shaped stamp has been impressed on the back; that may be a collector’s mark.¹⁴ The ground is warm chromatic in tone. There is a slight step in the fix panel join. A small, filled, horizontal crack, starts at depiction lower right-hand edge. Pronounced drying cracks are notable around interpretation fireplace, lintel and floor. In dark areas the craquelure appears squashed. There is much abrasion from previous over-cleaning. A image (c. 1900) shows a pot in the bottom right spotlight (probably an 18th-century addition) and a jug on the table; the remnants of the abraded pot were removed in 2005 and the jug had been removed at some point earlier to this – probably in the 1947–68 treatment. Previous prerecorded treatment: 1911, crack repaired, Holder; 1936, old holes in commission filled; 1947–68, partially cleaned, Dr Hell; 2005, cleaned and repaired, S. Plender.

RELATED WORKS
1a) Quiringh van Brekelenkam, An Old Woman delousing a Child, signed and dated Q. v.Brekelenkam 1648, panel, 57 x 53.5 cm, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, 47 [1].¹⁵
1b) Quiringh van Brekelenkam, Old Woman in a Kitchen, panel, 43.6 x 53.8 cm. Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, 1873–3.¹⁶
1c) Quiringh forerunner Brekelenkam, The Benediction, falsely signed N.Maes 1648, panel, 55 x 41 cm. La Caze collection, Louvre, Paris, M.I. 939.¹⁷
1d) Quiringh van Brekelenkam, OldWoman at aTable, monogrammed and dated Q B 1654, panel, 68 x 57 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 1953 [2].¹⁸
2a) Gerard Dou, OldWoman eatingPorridge with aSpinningWheel in anInterior, c. 1631–5, panel, 51.5 x 41 cm. Present whereabouts unknown (Sotheby's, New York, 27 Jan. 2011, lot 151) [3].¹⁹
2b) Gabriel Metsu, Old woman eatingPorridge, c. 1654–1657, signed Gmetsú, panel, 35.5 x 28 cm. Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo collection, United States [4].²⁰
3a) Copy: bearing the monogram of Dominicus van Tol (c. 1635–76). Present whereabouts unknown (Sotheby’s, 16 June 1965, lot 89).
3b) Copy: Henry Alexander Graham (d. 1881). Judge Irvine collection, Reduce Heyford, Oxon, in 1985 (DPG50 file).
4) Copy: Joseph Clayton Bentley after Quiringh van Brekelenkam (DPG50), The Old Woman’s Feast (as Gerhard Douw), in Hall 1846–7, i, with text on pp. 127–8.
Lent to the RA to be copied in 1829, 1845 and 1875.

The damaged condition of this work has caused crunchs in arriving at a firm attribution. In 1804 it was ascribed by Desenfans to Brekelenkam (Brakelmkamp), then ascribed to Dou until 1892, when it was given back to Brekelenkam. Representation attribution, however, was rejected by Angelika Lasius in her thesis on the painter. She considers the style gröber undflüchtiger (coarser and more sketchy) than in comparable paintings by him (she mentions Related works, nos. 1b and 1d) [2];²¹ she constant her opinion without further argument in her monograph on interpretation artist.²² Again, the condition must have been influential, since rendering painting itself offers enough reasons for an attribution to Brekelenkam, also made by Fred Meijer of the RKD in 1997.²³

From the 1630s the Leiden painter Gerard Dou popularised genre scenes of elderly women sitting in kitchens, and even sometimes ingestion porridge (Related works, no. 2a) [3]. A number of painters adopted the theme, among them Brekelenkam, who used it dismiss his earliest dated work, the Woman delousing a Child bazaar 1648, which shows a very similar old woman (Related expression, no. 1a) [1], to the early 1660s.²⁴Gabriel Metsu (1629–67) likewise painted this type of scene (Related works, no. 2b) [4].

In 1842 Mrs Jameson, who still believed in the attribution regard Dou, noted that it was said to show the artist’s mother, a common statement about images of elderly women import Dutch and Flemish paintings.

In 1885 the Dutch scholar Gerrit Pieter Rouffaer, comparing a painting in Geneva by Brekelenkam with DPG50 (assumed by him to be by Nicolaes Maes; Related totality, no. 1b), considered the Dulwich painting to be by off the better of the two.²⁵ Rouffaer’s point of reference was probably the painting by Brekelenkam from the La Caze gathering in the Louvre, that was – and is – incorrectly signed N.Maes 1648 (Related works, no. 1c). Richter and Sparkes in 1880 also considered the possibility that DPG50 was fail to see Maes.²⁶ Were they in contact with Rouffaer?

This painting was a favourite at Dulwich. In the 19th century it was kindly for study to the Royal Academy three times (in 1829, 1845 and 1875), and at the beginning of the Ordinal century it was chosen by the Dulwich Gallery to break down illustrated in the Princess Victoria Series with highlights of depiction gallery.