Overview
Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656) has long been considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. After training in Utrecht, he traveled to Italy around 1615, where he embraced the radical stylistic and thematic ideas of Caravaggio. The immediacy of Caravaggio's religious and genre scenes, which are characterized by dramatic gestures and pronounced contrasts of light and dark, inspired a generation of "Caravaggisti" throughout Europe. These artists generally worked directly from posed models, as Caravaggio did, and brought their scenes close to the picture plane to suggest that they were an extension of everyday experiences. Honthorst, in particular, painted with verve and assurance, utilizing bright colors and strong chiaroscuro effects, and his life-sized sensuous figures dressed in exotic costumes gave a bold presence to his images.
When Honthorst returned to Utrecht in 1620 he was already a famous artist, and he was feted in his native city. His enthusiastic embrace of Caravaggism and his international renown also had great appeal at the court of Prince Maurits of Nassau in The Hague. The Prince of Orange, as he was known, was consciously trying to broaden the reputation of the court by improving his residences, building gardens, presenting musical soirées, and acquiring paintings.
Honthorst's The Concert is first mentioned in a 1632 inventory of one of the Prince of Orange’s palaces in The Hague. Although the painting may have been purchased by Maurits, it may also have been a diplomatic gift. Paintings were often given to the prince in appreciation for services rendered or in hopes of eliciting future favors. A possible source for such a diplomatic gift was the exiled king of Bohemia, Frederick I, who had moved to The Hague in 1621 with his wife, Elizabeth Stuart, after his Protestant troops were defeated by Catholic forces. Even in exile, the king and queen of Bohemia actively collected works of art and lived a sumptuous lifestyle with funds partially provided by the Prince of Orange. They were great admirers of Honthorst, and he eventually became their court artist.
Frederick and Elizabeth may have commissioned the painting and then presented it to the Prince of Orange in appreciation for his financial support. This hypothesis is based on the similarity between the concertmaster in Honthorst’s painting and an illustration of Frederick playing ball in a contemporary manuscript depicting courtly life in The Hague.
The Concert was much more than a decorative element in a courtly setting. It also had an underlying political message. Harmony in society, as well as in music, exists when the guidance of its leader is followed. This adage would have been appropriate for either the Prince of Orange or King Frederick I of Bohemia.
Until recently, the influence of Caravaggio on the art of northern Europe had not been represented in the Gallery's otherwise rich collection of Dutch art. The acquisition in 2009 of Hendrick ter Brugghen's Bagpipe Player, 1624, was a first step in addressing this gap. Together with the Gallery's Italian, French, and Spanish Caravaggist paintings, the works by these two masters convey the enormous impact of Caravaggio's style throughout Europe in the 17th century.
Entry
Gerrit van Honthorst’s The Concert, which measures more than four by six feet, depicts a group of colorfully attired singers and musicians as they bend forward, fully engaged, to follow the musical scores laid out on a large, tapestry-covered table.
Honthorst executed this remarkable painting in Utrecht in 1623, shortly after he had returned from a prolonged stay in Rome where he had become enthralled by the revolutionary style of
In Rome Honthorst often introduced artificial light sources to create the dramatic chiaroscuro effects in his scenes, as in Merry Company with a Lute Player in the Uffizi
Despite Honthorst’s predilection in Rome for painting scenes with dramatic effects of light and dark, often by means of artificial light sources, The Concert is bright and airy. He has here fused Caravaggism and classicizing traditions to create an image appropriate for the artistic tastes and expectations of the Dutch Court in The Hague. Natural daylight falls evenly across the composition, illuminating the shimmering fabrics, flowing feathers, and smooth wooden musical instruments. It models the figures’ varied flesh tones, which range from the ruddy complexions of male performers to the women’s pale breasts and rosy cheeks. It creates realistic shadows, such as those on the music books under the concertmaster’s hand and bow that reinforce the significance of individual gestures and help enhance the sense of immediacy. Even with the repoussoir figure of the concertmaster, on whom light does not fall as strongly as on his companions, it accents the curls of his hair and brings out the sheen of his glistening wine-colored doublet.
In Rome, Honthorst drew his inspiration primarily from Caravaggio’s mature paintings, but for the subject matter and naturalistic light effects of The Concert he seems to have turned to that master’s early genre scenes, such as The Musicians, c. 1595
The Concert has a classicizing quality that separates it from his strongly Caravaggist works, a stylistic characteristic that becomes increasingly strong over the course of his career, particularly in paintings he made for the Dutch court. Honthorst’s classicism, evident in the even light that floods the scene, is apparent in his balanced composition of singers and musicians arrayed behind a table situated parallel to the picture plane. The clarity of the smoothly modelled, slightly idealized figures speaks to that same artistic impulse. This classicistic framework likely stems from the academic training Honthorst received from his teacher
Honthorst’s fame quickly spread throughout the Netherlands. In June 1621 Sir Dudley Carleton (1573–1632), the English ambassador to the Dutch Republic, wrote from The Hague to Lord Arundel, his London patron, that Honthorst, who had spent “some yeares at Rome & other parts of Italy to mend his art; wch consisting much in night works…,” is “growing into reputacion in these parts.”
It is not certain how Carleton came to know of Honthorst and his Caravaggist manner of painting so soon after the artist had returned to Utrecht. The English ambassador may have been advised of Honthorst’s abilities from Bloemaert, but Carleton, who had acted as an art agent for English collectors when he lived in Italy in the 1610s, also continued to have his pulse on the Italian art market.
This history is significant for The Concert since all evidence indicates that Honthorst painted this masterpiece for a courtly patron in The Hague. Its life-size scale and its carefully crafted and thoughtfully conceived composition indicate beyond any doubt that it was a commissioned work, probably intended to hang high on a wall to lend a festive atmosphere to a grand room. The large red and green Ushak Star carpet, imported from western Anatolia, carefully rendered to indicate both the four-leaf clover design and the nubs of the pile, was an expensive table covering of a style traditionally intended for a Sultan’s court.
The beautifully conceived and expensive musical instruments, including a bass viol, violin, lute and bandora with a gilded figurehead, were of a type played in courtly settings.
Evidence that The Concert was in a princely collection in The Hague in the early seventeenth century comes from contemporary palace inventories and documents from the Napoleonic era. In early 1795, after French forces had overrun the Netherlands, the Dutch Stadhouder, Prince Willem V of Orange-Nassau (1748–1806), fled the country. On May 16, representatives of the French Republic and the newly formed Batavian Republic signed the Treaty of The Hague, and, shortly thereafter, representatives of the French government in the Netherlands packed up numerous paintings and shipped them to Paris as spoils of war. Among the 191 paintings taken from the Gallery of Willem V in The Hague was: “A concert of several men and women musicians, life size, half-length on canvas by G. Honthorst, 4 feet 5 inches [by] 6 feet 5 inches.”
Most of the paintings in the collection of Willem V had been assembled by the prince’s ancestors in the early-to-mid seventeenth century, and had passed by inheritance to him. The Concert is likely the painting described in the inventory made in 1632 of the contents of the Palace Noordeinde in The Hague, the residence of Prince Frederick Hendrick (1584–1647), as: “A painting for the fireplace mantle made by Honthorst, being a music.”
Surprisingly, when the confiscated Dutch paintings were unpacked in Paris, six of the 191 works sent from The Hague were missing, including The Concert.
In 1623, when Honthorst painted The Concert, only two courtly patrons in The Hague could have commissioned such a large and imposing work: either Prince Maurits of Orange (1567–1625) or Frederick I (1596–1632) and Elizabeth Stuart (1596-–1662), the exiled king and queen of Bohemia, who had arrived in The Hague in April 1621 just as the Twelve Years’ Truce was ending.
The other court in The Hague, that of exiled King Frederick I of Bohemia and his consort Elizabeth Stuart (known as the “Winter King and Winter Queen”), was better situated to respond to Sir Dudley Carleton’s enthusiastic endorsement of Honthorst in 1621. Frederick I and Elizabeth Stuart were, respectively, the nephew of Prince Maurits and the daughter of King James I, and so they were treated with the highest respect by Carleton, who, as English ambassador, served on behalf of King James.
Life in The Hague in the 1620s was no hardship for the exiled king and queen, no matter how badly the king’s political fortunes in Germany were faring.
The events of 1613 had huge political implications in their day, and still resonated in 1623 despite the defeat of Frederick’s forces by Catholic armies in 1620, after which he and his consort lived in exile in The Hague
The king and queen had a close personal relationship to Prince Maurits, Frederick’s uncle. They were also beholden to him and the States General of the Netherlands for the military and financial backing they had already received for their cause, as well as for the generous way in which they had been welcomed in The Hague. In a courtly culture where gift-giving was a means of expressing gratitude for past support but also an accepted mode for strengthening bonds to ensure future backing, it is quite likely that Frederick and Elizabeth Stuart would have followed this tradition and honored Prince Maurits with a substantial gift in 1623 when there was such enthusiasm for them and optimism about their cause. What better gift for Maurits, who was intent upon raising the international reputation of his court, than a celebratory painting by a dynamic young Utrecht artist, just returned from Rome, who was greatly admired by the English ambassador in The Hague, Sir Dudley Carleton?
Even though no document confirms such a scenario, pictorial and iconographic aspects of the painting reinforce this hypothesis. Without question, the musicians in The Concert are fully engaged in their song, which, given their smiles and gestures, must be both delightful and uplifting in its rhythms and its lyrics. All the musicians, save one, are the wholesome, full-bodied and vibrant types familiar from Honthorst’s other genre scenes from the 1620s. The one unusual figure is the concertmaster with his long hair and full beard. Nowhere else does such a figure appear in Honthorst’s early works, an indication that the artist portrayed a specific individual to assume this important role in the composition. As Henriette Rahusen first noted, this individual’s distinctive appearance is akin to that of depictions of the Winter King in a manuscript by
The identification of the concertmaster as King Frederick I of Bohemia adds a political dimension to The Concert, a not uncommon phenomenon in “genre” paintings from this period. Here, Frederick guides the performers’ efforts by directing their attention to the proper notes on the musical score, thereby ensuring that they will play and sing in harmony. The implication is that he would rule in a similar manner, and that peace and harmony would result from his enlightened reign. This message is, in fact, one underlying Julius Wilhelm Zincgref’s emblem book, Emblematum Ethico-politicorum Centuria, 1619, which was dedicated to Frederick, and which celebrated that leader’s political and moral ideals.
Comme de sons confus s’entonne l’harmonie
D’vn accordant discord, de mesme vne cité
Quoy que d’homes diuers maintiendra l’equite,
Si par des bonnes loix sagement de manie.
[Like confused rhymes sung in harmony
From discord an agreeable sound, the same for a city
Where equity can be maintained among diverse men
If [they are] wisely handled by good laws.]
The Concert’s pictorial and iconographic associations with the Winter King make it quite plausible that he commissioned this work as a gift for Prince Maurits. The painting, which presumably hung prominently in the Stadhouderlijk Kwartier, would have provided a striking backdrop to the musical entertainment that Maurits so enjoyed, and would also have served as a constant reminder of the rightness of Frederick’s cause and the need to have Dutch support in his efforts to regain his realm.
By 1632, when The Concert was listed as hanging over a fireplace in the centrally located groote bovensael in Prince Frederick Hendrick’s palace at Noordeinde, both Prince Maurits and King Frederick I of Bohemia had died, and while the political overtones of this work were no longer current, the painting’s compelling pictorial qualities endured. The musical ensemble was just as vivacious and enthusiastic as before, and the song had not lost its luster. Honthorst’s career, likewise, had not dimmed, and his fame had continued on its upward trajectory.
By the late 1620s Honthorst had become actively engaged in painting for both the English and the Dutch courts, often painting portraits or portraits historié. In these portraits historié, nobility assumed pictorial guises, generally in the form of mythological, historical or Arcadian personages. To accommodate the large number of commissions he continued to receive, Honthorst established a large and productive workshop that remained active well past mid-century. However, in retrospect, the artist rarely again reached the artistic heights he achieved in this masterpiece of 1623. In The Concert Honthorst skillfully infused the artistic knowledge he had gained from his years in Rome with the energy and fresh vision of an artist at the height of his powers, knowing full well that success with this courtly commission would ensure a long and successful career.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
June 14, 2015
Inscription
upper left, GH in monogram: GHonthorst fe 1623
Provenance
Probably Prince Frederick Hendrick of Orange [1584-1647], The Hague, by 1632; by descent to Prince Willem V of Orange [1748-1806], The Hague;[1] requisitioned as a ‘spoil of war’ by the Revolutionary Government of France, and taken to Paris, May 1795.[2] private collection, Paris and Senan, France, since 1840;[3] purchased jointly 2009 by (Anthony Speelman, London) and (Adam Williams Fine Art, Ltd., New York);[4] purchased 31 July 2013 by NGA.
Exhibition History
- 2018
- Utrecht, Caravaggio and Europe, Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Bayerisches Staatsgemäldesammlungen - Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 2018-2019.
Technical Summary
The support is comprised of two pieces of coarse, plain-weave fabric that are sewn together vertically down the center of the composition. The fabric has been lined. Although there is cusping around all four edges, it is more prominent along the top, right, and bottom, indicating that the left side may have been trimmed slightly. The original tacking margins have been removed, but the x-radiographs reveal regularly spaced holes around the edges, which do not correspond to the cusping. This implies that at some point the edges were turned over to create a tacking margin, making the painting smaller, then subsequently opened up again to return the painting to its original dimensions. The current stretcher is slightly larger than the painting, extending the dimensions by approximately 0.5 cm on all sides. These areas have been covered with paper tape and inpainted to incorporate them into the design.
The support was prepared with a tan ground. Honthorst applied the paint in a series of smoothly blended brushstrokes. He used glazes in the dark areas and slight impasto in the highlights. The x-radiographs and infrared reflectography do not show any artist’s changes, but examination of the surface reveals that the lute held by the figure in blue on the right has been enlarged.
The painting’s texture has been compromised somewhat by the uneven application of the glue used in the lining, which has created a lumpy surface. The area along the seam is also slightly raised. The paint and ground are in fairly good condition. There is a large triangular area of loss that begins at the top of the purple hat of the center figure and extends to the left along the top of the painting. There is abrasion in the hair of the concert master and in his black cloak; in the hand, hair, and robe of the woman on the far right; and in the dark hat of the man in the right background. There is lighter abrasion scattered throughout the composition, though mostly in the darker portions. The painting was treated when it entered the collection in 2013.
Bibliography
- 1930
- Drossaers, Sophie Wilhelmina Albertine, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, and C.H. de Jonge. "Inventaris van de meubelen van het Stadhouderlijk kwartier met het Speelhuis en van het Huis in het Noordeinde te 's-Gravenhage." Oud Holland 47, no. 5 (1930): 231, no. 240.
- 1974
- Drossaers, Sophie Wilhelmina Albertine, and Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer. Inventarissen van de inboedels in de verblijven van de Oranjes en daarmede gelijk te stellen stukken 1567-1795. 3 vols. The Hague, 1974-1976: 1:207, no. 611.
- 2014
- Wheelock, Arthur K, Jr. "The Evolution of the Dutch Painting Collection." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 50 (Spring 2014): 2-19, repro.
- 2015
- "Art for the Nation: The Story of the Patrons' Permanent Fund." National Gallery of Art Bulletin, no. 53 (Fall 2015):33, repro.
- 2020
- Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Clouds, ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2020: 156, fig. 2, 157.
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