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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Emanuel de Witte

The Old Fish Market on the Dam, Amsterdam

ca. 1650
Oil on panel.
55 x 44.8 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
438
(
1930.127
)
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  
According to Houbraken, Emmanuel de Witte first trained with the Delft still life painter Evert van Aelst. He is documented in the painters’ guild in that city in 1636. He is later documented in Rotterdam in July 1639 and was once again in Delft in 1641. By 1652 he was in Amsterdam where he settled for the remainder of his career. De Witte was particularly esteemed for his paintings of church interiors but also depicted other subjects including a series of oils of market scenes whose precedents lie in the works of Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer.

Among his market scenes the present example is the earliest and was dated by Manke to around 1650. De Witte depicts a central aisle in the market framed by the stalls on either sides with fish and with customers holdings their baskets. The artist focused on the light in the first room, which is followed by another that is visible through a semicircular archway. This second area is more dimly lit and includes a large number of figures. The painting has become darker over the course of time, which makes it particularly difficult to read the right-hand side of the composition.

De Witte uses the colours and lighting to draw the viewer’s attention to the scene that takes place on the left where a woman in a white bonnet leans towards the stallholder so that he can place her purchase in her basket. Standing next to and on the same level as the huge fish on the stand (which include two skate) is a little girl seen from behind, while in the centre foreground a hungry dog observes the scene closely. We also see a stork, a motif that De Witte included in later market scenes. The bird holds a fish in its beak that it has found on the floor.

The scene is an accurate depiction of the old fish market in Amsterdam, which was located in the southwest corner of the city according to Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode’s map published in 1625. The market was completely surrounded by houses, as can be seen in this panel. Other similar compositions of fish markets by De Witte date to the early 1660s and to the 1670s. They depict larger spaces and include partial views of the city or backgrounds with a port, and have fewer figures of a more volumetric type. This is the case with the painting in the National Gallery in London and the one of 1672 in the Boijmans-Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam in which the fish is depicted in the foreground next to three figures.

The provenance of this panel is known from the 18th century when it was auctioned in Amsterdam in 1783. It belonged to the Dukes of Sutherland for some generations and was acquired for the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection via the Sanct Lucas gallery in Vienna in 1928.

Mar Borobia
17th Century17th Century - Dutch paintingPaintingOilpanel
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The Old Fish Market on the Dam, Amsterdam. El antiguo mercado del pescado en el Dam, Amsterdam, c. 1650
The Old Fish Market on the Dam, Amsterdam
Emanuel de Witte

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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The Old Fish Market on the Dam, Amsterdam. El antiguo mercado del pescado en el Dam, Amsterdam, c. 1650
The Old Fish Market on the Dam, Amsterdam
Emanuel de Witte

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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