Provenance

Jacques Goudstikker

Dutch, 1897 - 1940

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About twenty colorfully dressed people fill a long room behind an old man and young woman standing before a bishop in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or ash-white skin, and their clothing is in shades of golden yellow, raspberry pink, pumpkin orange, teal, sea blue, or pea green. The men wear tunics and leggings or robes, and some have turbans or feathered hats. The women wear gowns and white or sheer head scarves. The man at the center of the composition, the bishop, wears a pearl-white robe and conical mitre hat. His white hair falls past his shoulders, and he has a long, curly beard. A balding, bearded man and young woman with honey-blond hair stand in front of him. Each has traces of gold halos around their heads. They face each other, and each reaches out one hand, which the bishop in turn holds. The groups of men to our left and women to our right look in all directions, though few look at the couple at the center. An older woman at the rightmost edge of the group stands out. Her gray-toned face is lined, and she wears a black robe. Her eyes are screwed shut, her mouth downturned, and she holds up one hand, palm out. One man in the group to our left plays a lute and others break sticks. More broken sticks are strewn on the ground around the men. The walls of the room are pale lavender or plum purple.
Luca Signorelli, The Marriage of the Virgin, c. 1490/1491, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.39

The Marriage of the Virgin

Luca Signorelli · c. 1490/1491 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.39

Shown from the hips up, a bearded man wearing a textured shirt under a cranberry-red robe stands in front of a gold background in this vertical painting, which comes to a pointed arch at the top. The man’s pale skin has a green-gray cast in the shadows, but his cheeks are pink. His body faces us, but he looks off to our right with slitted, brown eyes under curving brows. He has a long, straight nose and his lips are closed. His shoulder-length brown hair curls around his head, and his beard falls to his chest in long ropes like thick fringe. His textured shirt is topaz blue, and the red robe is edged with gold. He holds his right arm, to our left, so it crosses his chest as he points to our right. A scroll in the other hand reads, “ECCE AGNUS DEI.ECCE Q.” A patterned halo is punched and incised into the gold background. Molding creating a three-lobed shape over the man’s head is punched with dots and marquis-shaped designs. Areas of brick red show through some areas of the gold background.
Lippo Memmi, Saint John the Baptist, probably c. 1325, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.291

Saint John the Baptist

Lippo Memmi · probably c. 1325 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.291

Shown from the thighs up, a pale-skinned woman looks down and off to our left as she holds the pointed end of a dagger toward her chest in this vertical painting. Her lips are slightly parted, and her arms are spread wide as holds the hilt of the dagger in her right hand, to our left. Her hooded, dark brown eyes are rimmed with red. Her head tilts to our left, her pale lips parted. There are gray shadows at the corners of her mouth and along her jawline. Her brown hair is pulled back under a cloth covering painted with white flecks to suggest shiny thread or possibly jewels. She wears a long, tawny-brown gown with diaphanous sleeves. The bodice is laced up over a cream-white undergarment with a deep V neck and voluminous sleeves with unfastened cuffs near her wrists. She wears a large, teardrop-shaped pearl in the ear we can see and two necklaces. One necklace is a strand of pearls, and the other is a gold and possibly jeweled pendant with another teardrop pearl hanging from a cord. A gold belt drapes around her hips over a narrow waist. She is warmly lit from the upper left and set against an earth-brown background. The artist signed and dated the center left, “Rembrandt 1664.”
Rembrandt van Rijn, Lucretia, 1664, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.76

Lucretia

Rembrandt van Rijn · 1664 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.76

A tall arrangement of blue irises, cream-white carnations, violets, peonies, tulips, and other azure-blue, white, and scarlet-red flowers in a terracotta urn carved with child-like putti takes up most of the space of this vertical still life painting. The arrangement is warmly lit from the upper left and sits near a corner of a stone ledge veined in caramel brown and golden yellow. The ledge extends off the right edge of the painting. Most of the flowers face us but some face away or droop down. Leggy tulips in full bloom rise high in the bouquet. A cluster of white peonies veined lightly with pale pink are gathered near a crimson-edged white carnation and vivid blue forget-me-nots near the center, above the urn. The stems and blossoms of other flowers swirl and twist through the arrangement. A small brown and orange butterfly with black spots perches with wings slightly open on a scarlet-red poppy at the top center. Another butterfly sits with wings spread near the front corner of the ledge. Black circles surrounded by rings that blend from sapphire blue to butter yellow look like eyes at the tips of each of the four wings. A third butterfly with white wings is partly visible behind the petals of a ruby-red peony in the lower right. A small bird’s nest woven with twigs and green moss sits to our right of the urn, and is filled with four blue eggs. The background behind the arrangement is streaked with sable brown and mustard yellow. The signature of the artist is written in cursive on the face of the stone ledge near the corner, “Jan Van Huysum fecit.”
Jan van Huysum, Flowers in an Urn, c. 1720/1722, oil on panel, Adolph Caspar Miller Fund, 1977.7.1

Flowers in an Urn

Jan van Huysum · c. 1720/1722 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1977.7.1

Shown from the hips up, a man with pale skin and shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a long-sleeved, rose-pink satin jacket and pants, props a flagpole with a voluminous blue flag against one shoulder in this vertical portrait painting. He stands with his body facing our left in profile with his left hand on his hip, elbow jutting out at us. He turns his face to look directly at us with dark eyes. He has a straight nose, rosy cheeks, and a mustache and narrow goatee below his lips, which are slightly parted. He wears a wide-brimmed black hat generously adorned with pale blue, turquoise, pale yellow, and orange plumes. The fabric of his pink clothing reflects the light in wide patches of white, creating the impression of a satin sheen. Wide, pale gray lace lines the front opening of the jacket, the shoulders, the arms, and the sides of the trousers. His white lace collar is tied with a pale celery-green bow and a bow of the same color ties the lace cuff of the wrist we can see. A baby-blue sash wraps around his waist and is tied in a large rosette at the back. Both hands are covered with ivory-white gloves. His left wrist rests against his hip so the underside of those fingers dangle down, while the other hand supports the flag pole, which is wrapped in blue fabric. A sword hangs from his front hip. The topaz-blue fabric of the flag, or standard, drapes down from the flag pole, which extends off the top right corner of the canvas. A coat of arms, about the size of a person’s palm, hangs from a nail with a string in the upper left corner on the taupe-colored wall behind the man. The coat of arms is made up of three fleur-de-lis lined up in a diagonal band and the remaining two corners are filled with stylized lions, long tongues curling out. The artist dated the work “1640” in the lower left corner.
Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck, Andries Stilte as a Standard Bearer, 1640, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1998.13.1

Andries Stilte as a Standard Bearer

Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck · 1640 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1998.13.1

A river spans the lower edge of this horizontal landscape painting, and winds into the distance to our right, below towering white clouds in a blue sky above. The clouds sweep up and toward us from the low horizon line, which is about a quarter of the way up the canvas. Rowboats, sailboats, and ducks dot the river to our right. The long, shallow ferry boat near the bottom center of the painting transports a pair of horses and a carriage, which is occupied by at least four seated people. More men, women, and a nursing woman fill the ferry around the carriage and animals. A herd of six cows stand at the water’s edge to the left, and two people sit nearby. Two more horse-drawn carriages filled with people head away from us. A church is visible in the middle distance through a break in the tall trees on the riverbank. Another church and buildings line the riverbank in the deep distance to our right.
Salomon van Ruysdael, River Landscape with Ferry, 1649, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund and The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund. This acquisition was made possible through the generosity of the family of Jacques Goudstikker, in his memory., 2007.116.1

River Landscape with Ferry

Salomon van Ruysdael · 1649 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2007.116.1

Bibliography

1946

  • Rousseau, Theodore. Consolidated Interrogation Report: The Goering collection. 1946: 71-74, attachments 17-18, 22-29 [copy: National Gallery Archives, S. Lane Faison Papers, Box 1]

1986

  • Venema, Adriaan. Kunsthandel in Nederland, 1940-1945. Amsterdam, c. 1986: 120-186

1994

  • Nicholas, Lynn. H. The Rape of Europa. New York, 1994:83-85, 104-107, 422-423.

1998

  • Riding, Alan. "Heirs Claim Art Lost to Nazis in Amsterdam." The New York Times 12 January 1998