| Title |
|
Schilderien te coop (Search for the image) |
| Translated title |
Paintings For Sale |
| Intro |
Paintings For Sale
Text by dr D. Barnes, accompanying Bramer’s drawing of a peddler of paintings (`schilderijen ventster’) |
| Code of occupational group |
45220 |
| Description |
Against the background of a large, ornate Italianate building, a longhaired woman walks across a rough-surfaced square moving away from the buildings. The woman, wearing a soft cap, neck scarf, and long, ankle-length garment, has two paintings tucked under her left arm and holds two others in her right hand. A man approaches from behind, bends slightly at the waist, and puts both his hands on the paintings held under the woman's arm. He wants to look more closely at the paintings. The painting visible under the seller's arm is a still life with a tall fluted wineglass, tazza, and fruit. The visible one held in her right hand is a landscape. All the paintings are framed simply in wood.
Paintings were sold in a variety of ways by artists during the 17th century. Occasionally the artist was commissioned by an individual or group to do a painting, often a portrait or group portrait, and was paid a certain sum of money at the beginning of the commission and a final payment when the patron(s) accepted the work. Far more often, however, artists painted for the market. Paintings were sold by an art dealer, by the artist out of his or her own studio, at booksellers' shops, occasionally at taverns where the tavern keeper had accepted paintings in payment for the artist's beer and wine bills, through estate auctions, or by peddlers at special fairs and "kermisses".
Artists painting for the market had to please the tastes of the buying public or else end up with a backlog of unsold works. Many paintings were sold cheaply in Holland during the 17th century. People used paintings to decorate their homes, shops, and offices. That prompted a popular attitude that purchasers could be critics or judges of art, a state of affairs that did not always please artists but one they could not really fight against. No doubt, this prospective "buyer" had commentary to offer as he examined the paintings.
There are not many paintings depicting the sale of paintings, although some prints show them displayed at fairs. An occasional painting shows several paintings displayed in an artist/dealer's studio, or a prospective buyer inspecting a painting as in Job Berckheyde's 1659 version in The Hermitage.
Bramer's time spent in Rome during the early stages of his career led to his incorporation of Italianate buildings in drawings and paintings. Whether this episode is imagined or realistically remembered, occurring in Italy or Holland, is less important than Bramer's humor in creating the apparent tension between the art dealer and potential buyer with his keen curiosity. |
| Source |
Donna R. Barnes, Ed D, Street scenes, Leonard Bramer's drawings of seventeenth-century daily life (Hofstra Museum exhibition 1991). Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York.
Click here for the introductory essay on Bramer's drawings. |
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