Jan Goeree
Study for an Illustration to Jacob Cats’ ‘Eighty-Two Years Old’
Date 1712
Epoque 1600-1750, 18th century
Origine The Netherlands
Medium Pen, Brown ink, Black chalk, Red wash
Dimension 13.8 x 14 cm (5³/₈ x 5¹/₂ inches)
Goeree’s monumental style and show of pomp and theatricality, is similarly revealed in his design for a frontispiece entitled An Allegory of the Decline of Classical Civilisation (Private collection). Both works feature compositions tightly packed with figures and activity, and yet they achieve a sense of harmony and balance. Antiquity, the main subject matter of An Allegory of the Decline of Classical Civilisation, is also referenced through the multitude of putti that throng Study for an Illustration to Jacob Cats’ ‘Eighty-Two Years Old’, giving the work a degree of nobility and timelessness that no doubt would have pleased the book’s author.
Jacob Cats (1577-1660) was a poet, moralist and statesman who is best remembered for his emblem books reflecting Calvinist philosophy. He studied law at Leiden and Orléans and became a successful lawyer specialising in witchcraft trials. While living in The Hague, he contracted a debilitating fever and for two years searched in vain for a cure, until he was mysteriously healed by a travelling doctor. During an interlude in the Eighty Years War, Cats and his brothers achieved great prosperity through draining and reclaiming land that had been flooded during the conflict, thus explaining his reference to the fortune he made in Biervliet. Cats became a prominent political figure in Middleburg and Dordrecht, serving as Grand Pensionary of Holland from 1636 to 1651, and was sent on at least two diplomatic missions to England. Cats was extremely popular and influential in his day, and his emblem books, poetry and autobiography were reprinted and translated repeatedly.
Goeree was a painter, draughtsman, engraver and etcher. He was the son of Willem Goeree, a Dutch art theorist who undertook a comprehensive survey of the various techniques necessary to make a great artist: drawing, architectural knowledge, perspective, anatomy, composition, imagination, colour and shading, all of which his son evidently mastered.
Date: 1712
Epoque: 1600-1750, 18th century
Origine: The Netherlands
Medium: Pen, Brown ink, Black chalk, Red wash
Dimension: 13.8 x 14 cm (5³/₈ x 5¹/₂ inches)
Provenance: Sale, (E. van Aelst et al), Amsterdam, Paul Brandt, 24-28 November 1975, lot 698;
Jacobus A. Klaver, Amsterdam (bears his mark, not in Lugt, on the backing),
his sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 10 May 1994, lot 103
Exhibition: Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, Tekeningen van oude meesters. De verzameling Jacobus A. Klaver, 1993 (catalogue by Marijn Schapelhouman and Peter Schatborn), no. 101
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