Caspar Netscher

Netscher, Gaspar

Dutch, 1639 - 1684

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Dutch painter (1639-1684)

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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.
Caspar Netscher, A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page, 1666, oil on panel, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2016.118.1

A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page

Caspar Netscher · 1666 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2016.118.1

Bibliography

1699

  • Piles, Roger de. Abrégé de la vie des Peintres.... Paris, 1699: 452-455.

1753

  • Houbraken, Arnold. De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen. 3 vols. in 1. The Hague, 1753 (Reprint: Amsterdam, 1976): 3:92-93.

2002

  • Wieseman, Marjorie E. Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting. Doornspijk, 2002.