CS0234

JAN LIEVENS ( 1607-1674 )

Fighting Card-players and Death c. 1638 Signed and dated lower right: J. Lievens Oil on canvas, 26 3/8 x 33 7/16 inches (67 x 84.9 cm.)

PROVENANCE (Sale, Christie’s, London, 20 February 1920, no. 40, as by Arent de Gelder [to Goodew for £ 89.50] Galerie van Diemen & Co., Amsterdam, c. 1920 H.M. Clark, London, ca. 1920-1921 Sale, Lepke, , 27 October 1925, no. 62 Dr. Fred. Schmidt-Benecke, Berlin, 1928 Sale, Wertheim, Berlin, 30 April 1930, no. 56 Dr. Albert Heppner, Berlin, 1931 Private Collection, Germany Johnny van Haeften Ltd., London, 1999 Private Collection, The , 1999-2009 Johnny van Haeften Ltd., London, 2009 Private Collection, New York, 2009-2013

EXHIBITED London, Johnny van Haeften Ltd., “Winter Exhibition of 17th Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings,” 1 – 23 December 1999. Washington, , “: A Dutch Master Rediscovered,” 26 October 2008 – 11 January 2009; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum, 7 February – 26 April 2009; Amsterdam, Museum Rembrandthuis, 17 May – 9 August 2009, no. 36

LITERATURE Schneider, Hans. “Lievens.” In Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950, 23: 214. Schneider, Hans. Jan Lievens, sein Leben und seine Werke. Haarlem, 1932. Supplemented by Rudi E.O. Ekkart, Amsterdam, 1973, 126-127, no. 137, 328. Klessmann, Rüdiger, ed. Jan Lievens: Ein Maler im Schatten . Exh. Cat., Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum. Brunswick, 1979, 104, under no. 34. Ekkart, Rudi E.O. “Die streitenden Spieler und der Tod.” In Jan Lievens: Ein Maler im Schatten Rembrandts, edited by Rüdiger Klessmann. Exh. Cat., Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich- Museum. Brunswick, 1979, 207, under no. 111. Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der -Schüler. 6 vols. Landau/Pfalz, 1983-1995, 3: 1783, no. 1198. Wheelock, Arthur. “Jan Lievens: Bringing New Light to an Old Master.” In Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, edited by Arthur K. Wheelock. Exh. Cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis. New Haven, 2008, 15. Dickey, Stephanie S. “The Raising of Lazarus” and “Fighting Card-players and Death.” In Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, edited by Arthur K. Wheelock. Exh. Cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis. New Haven, 2008, 204, 210, under nrs. 73 and 78. Hale, Meredith, and Arthur K. Wheelock. “Fighting Card-players and Death.” In Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, edited by Arthur K. Wheelock. Exh. Cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis. New Haven, 2008, 150-151, no. 36.

Etching: Jan Lievens, Fighting Card-players and Death, etching, 8 x 10½ inches (20.3 x 26.7 cm.), New York, Leiden Gallery.

Copies/Versions: After Jan Lievens, Fighting Card-players and Death, oil on canvas, 68 x 96 cm., location unknown (Sale, Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, 22 March 2005, no. 7).

NARRATIVE Jan Lievens was born on 24 October 1607, the son of a Flemish embroiderer in Leiden. He completed his artistic training in the years 1615 to 1621, first with Joris van Schooten in Leiden, and from 1619 on with in Amsterdam, with whom Lievens’s one-year- older fellow Leiden painter Rembrandt was also studying. As independent artists, Lievens and Rembrandt worked closely together between 1625 and 1631/32. Thereafter Lievens made a trip to England, where he apparently carried out commissions for the King and nobility. In 1635 he was accepted into the St. Luke’s Guild. From 1644 until his death in 1674 he lived and worked in Amsterdam. He received several commissions for important decoration projects, such as for the Amsterdam Town Hall and the Oranjezaal of the , the residence of Amalia van Solms, widow of the Stadholder Prince Frederick Henry.

The frequently made comparison with Rembrandt has served to diminish the reputation of Lievens. Only recently has it become clear that this artist, long mistaken to be a pupil and follower of Rembrandt, was a highly gifted and versatile talent who was able for a while to compete with Rembrandt.

Fighting card- and dice-players were a favourite and widespread theme in Netherlandish painting and prints of the 16th and 17th centuries. Numerous moralising images and commentaries warned about the consequences of the senseless and time-wasting “Devil’s Game”, that could lead to the loss of wealth and honour, especially when it was combined with drunkenness and violence. In like manner an engraving by the Haarlem printmaker Jacob Matham (1571-1631) shows, in a series of representations of the consequences of

drunkenness, two fighting card-players who throw themselves at each other with drawn weapons (Hollstein no. 315). And the Dutch proverb “Card, stockings and tankard ruin many a man” is clearly another reference to the fatal consequences of gambling and drinking.

To this dramatic scene, in which one of the two players, with an enraged expression on his face, draws a knife on his fellow-player, who defends himself with a beer tankard, Lievens added the figure of Death. Raising his right arm, he attacks the knife-wielder with a thighbone, at the same time grabbing him by the collar with his left hand. Thus Lievens took up current vanitas imagery, which would remind the viewer of the transience of earthly things. The sudden emergence of Death in the form of a skeleton-man, who unexpectedly and heedless of age, class or wealth, brings an end to human life, had a long tradition behind it in the seventeenth century. It is furthermore related to the many illustrated “Dances of Death” of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In this way, for example, one of the prints in a woodcut series produced in the Middle Rhine between 1485 and 1492 shows Death carrying off a card-player with the words: “Gambler, you missed the big chance …. Your cheating will help you little. You are going to get your reward according to how you have lived”.

A comparable representation by Lievens is in the collection of The Hon. Mrs. Townsend in Melbury House. In this signed and dated painting of 1638 an avaricious old couple is surprised by Death while they are counting their money (panel, 77 x 90 cm; see Sumowski 1983-1996, vol. III, p. 1782, with illustration p. 1836). The composition and style of both pictures show many similarities. Furthermore, the figure with the beer tankard, and the greedy old man in the painting in Melbury House, are nearly twins of each other. It can therefore be assumed that Lievens painted the fighting card-players in 1638 during his stay in Antwerp. This dating is also supported by the thematic connection to the many paintings of scuffling card- and dice-players that were produced by (1605/7-1638) in Antwerp in the years between 1634/36 and his death in 1638. Already in his paintings – as expressly mentions in his 1718 biography of Brouwer (I, p. 323) – the figure of a man raising a tankard to strike, appears (see for example Brouwer’s paintings in Munich, Alte Pinakothek, and Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister). There can be no doubt that Lievens and Brouwer knew each other very well. Lievens portrayed his fellow Antwerp artist in a chalk drawing, now in Paris (Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, Paris). Also a document drawn up in Antwerp in 1636, in which Brouwer stood as witness to an apprenticeship contract between Lievens and a pupil, testifies to the close personal contact between the two painters.

Lievens made an autograph etching after his own painting (Hollstein no. 19). The sheet bears a Latin inscription, emphasising death as the end of all quarrel and hatred spread by the Tempter.

Volker Manuth