The breakfast (Le gourmet en compagnie).

item details

NameThe breakfast (Le gourmet en compagnie).

ProductionAdriaen van Ostade; artist; circa 1652; Netherlands

Classificationprints, etchings, works on paper

Materialsink, paper

Materials Summaryetching

Techniquesetching

DimensionsPlate: 262mm (width), 220mm (height)

Registration Number1869-0001-372

Credit lineGift of Bishop Monrad, 1869

Overview

Adriaen van Ostade (1610-85) was a major Dutch Golden Age artist. He probably trained in Frans Hals's Haarlem workshop, where the subject matter of fellow student Adriaen Brouwer, master of delicately painted boors carousing, determined Van Ostade's own themes. In his early work, Van Ostade depicted scenes of peasants engaged in debauchery using Rembrandt's forceful chiaroscuro. Later, he portrayed calmer, more respectable people in comfortable interiors with carefully structured spaces and picturesque clutter. By then, both he and the Netherlands had become more prosperous. An extremely prolific artist, Van Ostade produced hundreds of paintings; over 800 survive. He also painted portraits and still lifes and added figures to paintings by Pieter Saenredam, Jacob van Ruisdael, and others. Van Ostade's watercolors, about half of which were made after 1670, were attempts to duplicate the effect of his oil paintings through watercolor and were in much demand. His students included his considerably younger brother Isaack and Jan Steen.

After Rembrandt, Van Ostade was the major Dutch printmaker of his day, producing 50 recorded etchings, and is well represented in Te Papa's collection. His prints were highly regarded by his contemporaries and remained enduringly popular long after his death and went through a number of editions.

This important print in Van Ostade's oeuvre has long been misunderstood: none of the alternative titles The breakfast nor The meal in the tavern, and still less 'the gourmet in company' make sense in relation to what we see before us. The Latin verse immediately below the image translates thus: 'Let us make time for a meal free of care/ After many a day comes weather fair'. This encourages a bland interpretation of the family scene, but it seems likely that Van Ostade has enjoyed a joke on us for several centuries. Its far more likely, subtler and highly ironical meaning has been unpacked only recent by Peter van der Coelen, in his essay 'Producing Texts: Artists, Poets and Publishers', in Celeste Brusati, Karl A.E. Enenkel and Walter Melion (eds), The Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400-1700 (Leiden, 2012):

In general, artists and poets did not collaborate very closely. They had their own aims and ambitions. This often resulted in complex relationships between image and text. But even when artists were responsible themselves for the choice of the captions, their function may not have been to simply explain what could be seen. For this reason, the meaning of the etching by Adrian van Ostade traditionally known as The Breakfast has long been misunderstood... Since the Haarlem artist kept control over the plates of the fifty etchings he made, he must have been responsible for the Latin text that was added to this print: 'Securae reddamus tempora mensae/venit post multos una serena dies'... According to several interpreters, this text is a reference to the modest enjoyment of the meal by the company of peasants depicted. The question is, however, whether this learned caption - an out-of-context quotation from the Roman poet Tibullus - might not have been meant to make fun of the peasants. In this instance, as often was the case with print captions, the relation between the text and illustration is not self-evident. For what we see is not a family enjoying their breakfast but rather a drinking bout in a tavern in which even children seem to take part.

...Van Ostade's so-called Breakfast is exceptional in his oeuvre, since is is his only etching with a text. Like Rembrandt and other peinte-graveurs of his time, Van Ostade usually produced prints without captions. Reproductive prints, however, would continue to use captions for centuries to come... (pp. 90-92).

This impression is from the tenth state of twelve, probably dating from the 18th century. It was donated to the Colonial Museum by the Danish politician, bishop, collector and political refugee, Ditlev Monrad, in 1869, forming part of Te Papa's foundation art collection.

Sources:

The J. Paul Getty Museum, 'Adriaen van Ostade', http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/460/adriaen-van-ostade-dutch-1610-1685/

Peter van der Coelen, 'Producing Texts: Artists, Poets and Publishers', in Celeste Brusati, Karl A. E.. Enenkel and Walter Melion (eds), The Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400-1700 (Leiden, 2012): 75-100.

Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art March 2019