Past Exhibition

Pleasure and Piety: The Art of Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638)

A group of light-skinned people and animals gather in an oval ring around a shallow pool in a wooded landscape in this horizontal painting. Deep in shadow but closest to us, animals, objects, and people create a continuous band in the foreground. From left to right is a horse, a reclining woman and small child, a goat tended by a nude child, a dog sniffing at a pile of crockery, baskets, and metal pans and dishes, a cat lapping from a shallow pewter dish, and a young man drinking from a dish or large shell in the lower right corner. Beyond this and to our right, an older man with gray hair and beard and wearing turquoise, pink, and blue robes taps an outcropping of rocks with a thin rod. Water gushes in thin streams from the outcropping into the pool below. The bearded man is surrounded by several standing men and women. Men, women, and children bend over the edge of the pool around its perimeter, filling or drinking from jugs, dishes, and pans. Most of the men wear long robes and some wear turbans, and the women wear long dresses or robes in teal, aquamarine, shell pink, pale yellow, and ivory. Trees enclose this group to the left and at the center of the painting. Another band of dozens of people, animals, and wagons line the horizon in the distance. They are painted in pale gray, blue, pink, and white. The horizon line comes three-quarters of the way up the composition and glimpses of vibrant blue sky and white clouds are seen through breaks in the trees. Light glints off of clothing, smooth skin, the fur of the animals, and especially the metalware in the foreground to give the painting a glimmering, almost glossy look.
Joachim Anthonisz Wtewael, Moses Striking the Rock, 1624, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1972.11.1

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    West Building, Main Floor, Northeast Galleries
A group of light-skinned people and animals gather in an oval ring around a shallow pool in a wooded landscape in this horizontal painting. Deep in shadow but closest to us, animals, objects, and people create a continuous band in the foreground. From left to right is a horse, a reclining woman and small child, a goat tended by a nude child, a dog sniffing at a pile of crockery, baskets, and metal pans and dishes, a cat lapping from a shallow pewter dish, and a young man drinking from a dish or large shell in the lower right corner. Beyond this and to our right, an older man with gray hair and beard and wearing turquoise, pink, and blue robes taps an outcropping of rocks with a thin rod. Water gushes in thin streams from the outcropping into the pool below. The bearded man is surrounded by several standing men and women. Men, women, and children bend over the edge of the pool around its perimeter, filling or drinking from jugs, dishes, and pans. Most of the men wear long robes and some wear turbans, and the women wear long dresses or robes in teal, aquamarine, shell pink, pale yellow, and ivory. Trees enclose this group to the left and at the center of the painting. Another band of dozens of people, animals, and wagons line the horizon in the distance. They are painted in pale gray, blue, pink, and white. The horizon line comes three-quarters of the way up the composition and glimpses of vibrant blue sky and white clouds are seen through breaks in the trees. Light glints off of clothing, smooth skin, the fur of the animals, and especially the metalware in the foreground to give the painting a glimmering, almost glossy look.
Joachim Anthonisz Wtewael, Moses Striking the Rock, 1624, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1972.11.1

Overview: A masterful storyteller, Joachim Wtewael (1566 – 1638) (pronunciation) depicted risqué mythological scenes and moralizing biblical stories with equal ease. He was a virtuoso draftsman and a brilliant colorist, adept at working on both monumental canvases and small copperplates. He could paint from the imagination and from life, creating striking portraits of family members and introducing naturalistic still lifes into many of his narrative compositions.

Born and raised in Utrecht, one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands, Wtewael spent four years in Italy and France early in his career. During these study years he embraced the popular international style known as mannerism, characterized by extreme refinement, artifice, and elegant distortion. Throughout his career, Wtewael remained one of the leading proponents of this style, even as most early seventeenth-century Dutch artists shifted to a more naturalistic manner of painting. Wtewael’s inventive compositions, teeming with twisting, choreographed figures and saturated with pastels and acidic colors, retained their appeal for his patrons. Yet his strong adherence to a mannerist style would also lead to the eventual decline of his reputation. This exhibition, which features 37 paintings and 11 drawings, sheds light on Wtewael’s artistic excellence, allowing him to reclaim his rightful place among the great masters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Organization: The exhibition is organized by the Centraal Museum Utrecht; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation.

Sponsor: This exhibition is made possible by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art. It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Attendance: 105,326

Catalog: Pleasure and Piety: The Art of Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638). By James Clifton et al. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2015.

Brochure: Pleasure and Piety: The Art of Joachim Wtewael by Margaret Doyle. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2015. 

Other Venues:

  • Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 02/21/2015–05/25/2015
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 11/01/2015–01/31/2016

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