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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Jacobus Vrel

Interior with a Woman Seated by a Hearth

ca. 1654
Oil on panel.
64.5 x 47.5 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1998.30
)
Room 25
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Though unsigned, this painting is typical of Jacobus Vrel's art in its depiction of a tall and narrow domestic interior in shadow with a hearth and lighted windows in the back wall. A woman in a white kerchief sits head in hand beside the fireplace; to the right a child's cradle appears before an enclosed "box bed" with a brass bedwarmer hanging on the wall and blue ceramic plates and a brass salver providing decoration above. The bedding is draped on the chair and the pillows have been plumped and sit airing on a table at the back. Other cozy details are the family pets-a small, spotted dog lying at the woman's feet and a cat making itself comfortable perched on a small footwarmer on the floor. Characteristic of Vrel's interior is the spare and attenuated space, the curiously stunted furniture, and the shadowed foreground and cool backlighting.

Closest in conception and design to the present work are three other domestic interiors with tall windows, a hearth, and a woman viewed in lost profile, namely Woman and Child beside a Table (Brussels, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Woman Combing a Child's Hair (Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts) and Woman at a Window (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum). The date 1654 appears on the last mentioned. Since the present work is related in style, composition and technique to the Vienna painting a similar date is proposed for the Baroness's painting. Vrel depicted women, usually singly, in a variety of domestic roles: tending a fire, doing laundry, ministering to children or convalescents, or simply reading or sleeping. Many of the same furnishings (the box bed, chairs, candlesticks, dishes, etc.) reappear in his other interiors but the rooms themselves vary in subtle ways. Like Pieter de Hooch he favoured contre-jour illumination and an expressive use of space with glimpses through a window or door to the diminutive alleyways that feature in his street scenes. However, Vrel never attained De Hooch's sophisticated command of perspective and consistently avoided views to adjoining rooms-De Hooch's signature motif. Vrel concentrated instead on the single all-purpose room that formed the centre of the huisvrouw's home life, gently illuminated by the tall windows in the far wall. His rather naïve drawing style and straightforward, somewhat dry painting technique rarely resorted to glazes or other refinements but beautifully complements his quiet and unpretentious domestic themes.

Apparently another version of this painting of similar dimensions (panel 64.5 x 47.5 cm), but which to judge from the reproduction may only be a copy, was sold in London.

Peter C. Sutton

17th CenturyPaintingOilpanel
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Products and publications

Interior with a Woman Seated by a Hearth

Interior with a Woman Seated by a Hearth

17.00 €

Max Beckmann, figuras del exílio. Exhibition catalogue. Paperback Spanish language edition.

Max Beckmann, figuras del exílio. Exhibition catalogue. Paperback Spanish language edition.

9.50 €

César Paternosto. Towards painting as object. Exhibition Catalogue

César Paternosto. Towards painting as object. Exhibition Catalogue

9.50 €

Alex Katz (exhibition catalog. Spanish with texts in English)

Alex Katz (exhibition catalog. Spanish with texts in English)

32.00 € 30.40 €

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Interior with a Woman Seated by a Hearth. Interior con una mujer sentada junto al hogar, c. 1654
Interior with a Woman Seated by a Hearth
Jacobus Vrel

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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Interior with a Woman Seated by a Hearth. Interior con una mujer sentada junto al hogar, c. 1654
Interior with a Woman Seated by a Hearth
Jacobus Vrel

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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