A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page

1666

Caspar Netscher

Artist, Dutch, 1639 - 1684

Shown from about the knees up, a pale-skinned young woman stands within a stone niche, with a parrot perched on her finger as she gazes out at us in this vertical painting. The woman’s hands are raised to chest height, and she balances the spruce-blue parrot on the index finger of her far hand while her other hand holds an indistinct, white object. Her body is angled to our left, and she looks at us from the corner of her green eyes under faint brows. Her round face has a small nose, flushed cheeks, and her coral-red mouth curls up in a slight smile, her lips parted. Her honey-blond hair is gathered at the back of her head with curly tendrils framing her face and falling to her shoulders. She wears a golden-brown gown trimmed with a narrow ruffle of white fabric along the low neckline that reveals her décolletage. The bird faces the woman and lifts something, presumably a bit of food, up with one dark claw. The underside of its tail is crimson red. A light-skinned boy stands in deep shadow just to the right of the woman. He looks up at her and holds a silver tray in both hands. They stand within a light brown, arched, stone opening beyond a ledge, which comes up to about the woman’s knees. A carpet patterned with stylized flowers in ruby red, burnt orange, teal blue, white, and black is bunched up and draped over the parapet, to our right. A tall, iron-gray cage sits to our left. The rug partly covers an inscription on the front face of the niche that reads, “M. DO,” with the O cut off. A copper-colored, fringe-lined drapery hangs from the upper right of the arch and is fastened to the inner edge of the opening to create a swag. The woman is brightly lit from the upper left, and the space behind her and the boy is ink black. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner as if he had carved into the front face of the arch. It reads, “CNetscher .Ao. 16.66,” with the C and N overlapping to make a monogram.

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Caspar Netscher trained in Deventer with Gerard ter Borch, from about 1654 to 1659. Like his teacher, Netscher became an outstanding portraitist as well as a master of portraying the social interactions of the Dutch elite. He also developed an exquisite painting technique that allowed him to imitate a wide range of textures, whether linen, satin, or the rough nap of an oriental rug. Around 1662, after a short trip to France where he married, Netscher settled in the courtly city of The Hague. There he found a clientele eager for his refined scenes of ladies at the toilet, musical companies, and gallant soldiers. He soon turned his attention to portraiture, much like other contemporary "high life" genre painters, including Frans van Mieris.

Signed and dated "CNetscher . Ao . 16.66," A Young Woman Feeding a Parrot is one of Netscher's finest genre paintings. It depicts an elegant young woman, wearing a gold-colored dress with split sleeves, gazing coquettishly out at the viewer as she feeds an African grey parrot perched on her right hand. Peering up at her from the dim recesses of the interior is an attentive pageboy holding a silver tray. The woman and her attendant stand behind an illusionistic stone niche with a bronze-colored silk curtain pinned to the side. A sumptuous oriental carpet spilling out over the bottom ledge adds to the illusionism as it partially obscures roman numerals that are seemingly carved into the stone. The remarkable range of Netscher's painting techniques is evident in the juxtaposition of the precisely articulated steel bird cage and the woman's shimmering dress, which Netscher modelled with softer and more fluid strokes.

A Young Woman Feeding a Parrot is in excellent condition. Netscher's brushwork is exquisite, his textures dazzling, and his colors disarmingly radiant. This masterpiece, which the Nazis confiscated from a Belgian family in 1942, has been in the Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal since 1952. It was recently restituted to the family's heirs, and sold at auction in 2014, where it was purchased by the art dealer Richard Green. This acquisition will complement the Gallery's other outstanding high-life genre scenes by Gerard ter Borch, Gabriel Metsu, Frans van Mieris, Jacob Ochtervelt, and Johannes Vermeer. Fortunately, Lee and Juliet Folger/The Folger Fund have offered to purchase the painting, another extraordinary demonstration of their generosity and commitment to the National Gallery of Art.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 50-A

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Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist.[1] purchased 1674 for 140 guilders by (Gerrit Uylenburgh, Amsterdam);[2] consigned by 19 April 1675 to Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680), London.[3] possibly Pierre Plongeron [d. 1694], The Hague.[4] Johann Wilhelm II, Elector Palatine [1658-1716], Düsseldorf; transferred with the collection first to the elector’s Palace in Mannheim, then to the Alte Pinakothek, Munich;[5] sold 1936 to (Julius Böhler, Munich). (Firma D. Katz, Dieren), in 1937. Hugo Daniel [1867-1942] and Elisabeth J. Spanjaard [1871-1963] Andriesse, Brussels, by 1938.[6] (Kunsthandlung Abels, Cologne), in 1950; Rudolf Ziersch, Wuppertal; gift 1952 to the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal;[7] restituted 2014 to the heirs of Hugo and Elisabeth Andriesse;[8] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 4 June 2014, no. 16); (Richard Green Fine Paintings, London); purchased October 2016 by NGA.
[1] Inscribed on the verso of the ricordo (study drawing) for the painting (now in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London, number Oo,11.250), in the artist’s hand, is the following: “Het steen byde Jonge moet hee.. maeesen / gelyck aende andre zyde / Geschildert voor h..d..[crossed out] guldens / 1666” (The stone[work] next to the boy [possibly ‘has to be whole’] / just like the other side / Painted for h..d..[crossed out] guilders / 1666). The “h” can only stand for “honderd” (hundred), while the “d” represents either the middle “d” of the word honderd, or the start of the word “dertig” (thirty), indicating that the artist sold the painting for either one hundred or one hundred and thirty guilders. See: Marjorie E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting, Doornspijk, 2002: 207, no. 54.
[2] Uylenburgh (1625-1679) was both a painter and an art dealer, having taken over the business of his father, Hendrick Uylenburgh (1584/1589-1661). Following a dispute over the sale of art to the Elector of Brandenburg in the early 1670s, Uylenburgh’s fortunes declined and claims by creditors resulted in his case being referred to the Amsterdam Bankruptcy Chamber in early 1675. In April a complete inventory and appraisal of his possessions, including paintings, was made, in which Uylenburgh lists as no. 89 “Young woman with a parrot by Netscher, the same as I paid in cash last year – 140” (Amsterdam Municipal Archives, archive o.5072, inv. no. 1573, item 340; the appraisal is undated, but the accompanying agreement between Uylenurgh and his creditors is dated 19 April 1675). See Friso Lammertse and Jaap van der Veen, Uylenburgh & Son: Art and Commerce from Rembrandt to De Lairesse, 1625-1675, Zwolle and Amsterdam, 2006: 301-302, no. 89, 303 n. 1, 305 n. 84.
[3] In the appraisal of 1675 (see note 2), the Netscher is included in a list of eight paintings described as being “with Mr. Pieter Lelij in England.” Lely trained as a painter in Haarlem and left for England in 1641. Appointed court painter to King Charles II in 1661, he was also an art collector as well as being known as a “trusty and well beloved friend” of the Uylenburgh family; he served as their representative when Gerrit’s brother Abraham died in Dublin in 1668. See: Lammertse and Van der Veen 2006, 70, 77. The eight paintings seem to have been with Lely on commission, and he may have purchased one or more for his own collection, although the Netscher does not appear to be listed in the catalogue of Lely’s collection when it was sold at auction on 18 April 1682, unless it was one of the many paintings titled A Woman. See: Diana Dethloff, “The Executors’ Account Book and the Dispersal of Sir Peter Lely’s Collection,” Journal of the History of Collections 8, no. 1 (1996): 15-51.
[4] Plongeron was agent and chamberlain to the Elector Palatinate. His estate inventory of 27 September 1694 lists “een vrouwtien geschildert op peneel met papegaij op de hant, van Netsgaer” (a woman on panel with parrot on the hand, by Netsger). See: Wieseman 2002, 207, no. 54, 142, document 98 (incorrectly indicated as document 95 on p. 207).
[5] The painting was first published in 1751 by Johan van Gool, De Nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche Kunstschilder en Schilderessen, 2 vols., The Hague, 1751: 2:562, where it is listed as hanging in the “second cabinet” of the Elector’s palace in Düsseldorf. It has not yet been identified in the early catalogues of the art owned by the Electors Palatine. It was number 1399 in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek.
[6] Hugo Andriesse, a Dutch industrialist and philanthropist living in Brussels, lent the painting to an exhibition in Rotterdam that opened in late 1938 (on Andriesse, see email dated 26 August 2022 from family member in curatorial file). In 1939 he deposited it, with other paintings from his collection, with the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, before fleeing Europe with his wife and eventually settling in New York. From there, after the Germans occupied Belgium during World War II, the painting was confiscated with the rest of the Andriesse collection on 3 December 1941 by the Einsatztab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR no. HA 9), and on 12 March 1942 transferred to the Jeu de Paume, in Paris. On 20 March 1944 it was acquired for the Nazi’s Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering (RM no. 1203), and transferred to Goering’s “Kurfürst Bunker,” a command center for the Nazi Luftwaffe, in Potsdam. See the record for the painting at the Cultural Plunder by the ERR website: https://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/ (accessed 30 June 2017). The 1985 catalogue of 17th century Dutch paintings in the Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, lists the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne in the provenance; this has not yet been confirmed.
[7] The painting was number 659 in the museum’s collection.
[8] Hugo and Elisabeth Andriesse had no children; the heirs were the charities named in Mrs. Andriesse's will.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1937

  • Tentoonstelling van belangrijke 16e en 17e eeuwsche hollandsche schilderijen, Firma D. Katz, Dieren, 1937, no. 56.

1938

  • Catalogus schilderijen, teekeningen en beeldhouwwerken uit particuliere Nederlandsche verzamlingen, Museum Boymans-Van Beunigen, Rotterdam, 1938-1939, no. 24, repro.

2009

  • Kurfürst Johann Wilhelms Bilder, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 2009, repro.

2017

  • Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry, Musée du Louvre, Paris; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2017-2018, no. 13.3, repro.

2021

  • Clouds, Ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2021, no. 17, repro.

Bibliography

1751

  • Gool, Johan van. De Nieuwe Schouburg der Nederlantsche Kunstschilder en Schilderessen. 2 vols. The Hague, 1751: 2:562.

1753

  • Descamps, Jean Baptiste. La vie des peintres flamands, allemands et hollandais. 4 vols. Paris, 1753-1763: 3(1760):84.

1762

  • Dézallier d'Argenville, Antoine-Joseph. Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres. 4 vols. Paris, 1762: 3:56.

1829

  • Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829-1842: 4(1833):161, no. 53.

1863

  • Parthey, Gustav Friedrich. Deutscher Bildersaal. Verzeichniss der in Deutschland vorhandenen Oelbilder verstorbener Maler aller Schulen. 2 vols. Berlin, 1863-1864: 2(1864):189, no. 33.

1866

  • Marggraff, Rodolphe. Catalogue des Tableaux de l'ancienne Pinacothèque Royale à Munich. Munich, 1866: 166, no. 188.

1884

  • Eastlake, Charles L. Notes on the Principal Pictures in The Old Pinakothek at Munich. London, 1884: 151-152, no. 1399.

1890

  • Catalogue of the Paintings in the Old Pinakothek Munich. Introduction by Dr. Franz von Reber. Translated by Joseph Thacher Clarke. Munich, 1890: 278, no. 1399.

1898

  • Hanfstaengl, Franz. Die Meisterwerke der Königl. Aelteren Pinakothek zu München. Munich, 1898: 161, no. 1399, repro.

1904

  • Reber, Franz von. Katalog der Gemälde-Sammlung der Königlichen älteren Pinakothek in München. 2nd ed. Munich, 1904: 300-301, no. 1399.

1906

  • Wurzbach, Alfred von. Niederlandisches Kunstler-Lexikon. 3 vols. Vienna, 1906-1911: 2(1910):228.

1907

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907-1928: 5(1912):274, no. 397a.

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 5(1913):195, no. 137.

1930

  • Bercken, Erich von der. Katalog der Älteren pinakothek zu München. Munich, 1930: no. 417 (1399).

1952

  • Städtisches Museum Wuppertal. 50 Jahre Städtisches Museum Wuppertal, 1902-1952. Wuppertal, 1952: 4, 31, fig. 3.

1974

  • Pigler, Andor. Barockthemen: eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. 3 vols. Rev. ed. Budapest, 1974: 2:536.

  • Robinson, Franklin W. Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre Painting of the Golden Age. New York, 1974: 94, fig. 229.

1977

  • Aust, Günter. Das Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal. Recklinghausen, 1977: 10, 20 fig. 26.

1979

  • Aust, Günter. Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal. Braunschweig, 1979: 18.

1984

  • Sutton, Peter C. Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting. Edited by Jane Iandola Watkins. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; Royal Academy of Arts, London. Philadelphia, 1984: xlvi, fig. 73.

1985

  • Rowedder, Eva, and Hans-Joachim Raupp. Niederländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts aus dem Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal. Wuppertal, 1985: 60-61, no. 659, repro.

1988

  • Sluijter, Eric J., Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen. Leidse Fijnschilders: van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge 1630-1760. Exh. cat. Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden. Zwolle, 1988: 253, 255.

1991

  • Ydema, Onno. Carpets and Their Datings in Netherlandish Paintings, 1540-1700. Zutphen, 1991: 168.

2002

  • Wieseman, Marjorie E. Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting. Doornspijk, 2002: 207-208, no. 54, color pl. 10.

2009

  • Yeide, Nancy H. Beyond The Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection. Dallas, 2009: 384, no. A1216, repro.

2017

  • Rahusen, Henriette. "Caspar Netscher, A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 56 (Spring 2017): 28-29, repro.

  • Rahusen, Henriette. "Caspar Netcher, A Woman Feeding a Parrot with a Page". National Gallery of Art Bulletin 56 (Spring 2017): 28-29, repro.

Inscriptions

lower left, the CN in monogram: CNetscher .Ao. / 16.66

Wikidata ID

Q15804434

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