Firma D. Katz

Dutch

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A young man with tanned, peachy skin sits at a table pulling his mouth wide with both hands in this vertical painting. On the far side of a wooden table, he faces us with elbows splayed wide. He has hooked the first finger of each hand into the corners of his mouth to stretch his open lips into a long, goofy line. He has wide-set eyes and a wide nose. His brown hair sticks out from under a tall, fuzzy brown hat, which has a knife secured by the blade in a loop to our left. The man’s iron-gray jacket has coffee-brown sleeves with the white of his shirt showing at the cuffs. A putty-gray jug accented with washes of rust-red and a glass filled with an amber liquid sit on the table before him. Soft light from the upper left gleams white on these smooth surfaces. A dark mass visible under the table is presumably the tops of his legs. The top right corner of his wooden chair is visible over his right shoulder, on our left, and he is set against a dove-gray background. The scene is loosely painted so brushstrokes are especially visible in the man’s face and hands.
Adriaen Brouwer, Youth Making a Face, c. 1632/1635, oil on panel, New Century Fund, 1994.46.1

Youth Making a Face

Adriaen Brouwer · c. 1632/1635 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1994.46.1

Seven pale-skinned people crowd around a wooden table to our right in this horizontal painting, as several more gather around a fire in a deeply shadowed room beyond, to our left. The room we are in has high ceilings and peanut-brown walls and floor. At the center of the composition, a man dressed in mustard yellow with a yellow and burnt-orange jester’s cap stands facing us. His smiling mouth is agape, and he lifts his left arm, to our right, to gesture toward the group at the table there. His feet are widely planted, and a ceramic jug dangles from his other hand. At the table to our right, one man sits at the front, left corner of the table, leaning back in his chair as he raises his black hat high in his right hand, closer to us. His face is tipped up and his mouth is wide open. Across from him is another young man in a blue-gray jacket who wears a paper crown. With the back of the wrist closer to us planted on his hip, he tilts back his head to drink from a tall tankard held in his other hand. One young and one older woman women sit smiling among the men. The younger woman wears a navy-blue dress with a white cap covering the back of her blond hair, and the older woman is in ocean blue with a white head covering. Two more men at the table also have their mouths open and wear earth-toned clothes. A man has poked his head through a small, squared opening high on the wall above the table to our right, to look down at the group. Over the the man in the jester's hat, a gray owl sits chained to a perch driven into the wood stud that frames the wall behind the group. Bits of paper are scattered on the floor and two terracotta jugs sit gleaming in the lower right corner. A tawny cat peers out from behind the drinker’s seat. A dog with sable-brown fur lies near a low table in the lower left corner of the painting. A shallow, terracotta dish with short feet sits on the table and a brown ceramic jug, oyster shells, and a few stalks of straw sit near the dog and table. In the dimly lit room beyond this one, a man, woman, and four children gather around a fireplace. The woman holds a long-handled griddle over the flame, and she turns to look back over her shoulder. The artist signed and dated the work as if he had written on the front edge of the low table to our left: “D. TENIERS F 1635.”
David Teniers the Younger, Peasants Celebrating Twelfth Night, 1635, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1972.10.1

Peasants Celebrating Twelfth Night

David Teniers the Younger · 1635 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1972.10.1

Shown from about the knees up, a pale-skinned young woman stands within a stone niche, with a parrot perched on her finger as she gazes out at us in this vertical painting. The woman’s hands are raised to chest height, and she balances the spruce-blue parrot on the index finger of her far hand while her other hand holds an indistinct, white object. Her body is angled to our left, and she looks at us from the corner of her green eyes under faint brows. Her round face has a small nose, flushed cheeks, and her coral-red mouth curls up in a slight smile, her lips parted. Her honey-blond hair is gathered at the back of her head with curly tendrils framing her face and falling to her shoulders. She wears a golden-brown gown trimmed with a narrow ruffle of white fabric along the low neckline that reveals her décolletage. The bird faces the woman and lifts something, presumably a bit of food, up with one dark claw. The underside of its tail is crimson red. A light-skinned boy stands in deep shadow just to the right of the woman. He looks up at her and holds a silver tray in both hands. They stand within a light brown, arched, stone opening beyond a ledge, which comes up to about the woman’s knees. A carpet patterned with stylized flowers in ruby red, burnt orange, teal blue, white, and black is bunched up and draped over the parapet, to our right. A tall, iron-gray cage sits to our left. The rug partly covers an inscription on the front face of the niche that reads, “M. DO,” with the O cut off. A copper-colored, fringe-lined drapery hangs from the upper right of the arch and is fastened to the inner edge of the opening to create a swag. The woman is brightly lit from the upper left, and the space behind her and the boy is ink black. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner as if he had carved into the front face of the arch. It reads, “CNetscher .Ao. 16.66,” with the C and N overlapping to make a monogram.
Caspar Netscher, A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page, 1666, oil on panel, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2016.118.1

A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page

Caspar Netscher · 1666 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2016.118.1

We look slightly down onto a panorama with dozens of pale-skinned men, women, and children skating and standing on a frozen river in this horizontal landscape painting. Most of the men wear black hats and suits, some with white collars and hip-length capes. The women all wear ankle- or floor-length skirts, and some are covered with black cloaks that drape over their heads to their feet. Many people wear black but some of the clothing is scarlet red, sage green, celestial blue, beige, or slate gray. A few people draw the eye, like the man standing with his back to us, wearing dark gray and holding a tall pole in the lower left corner. To the right, a man kneels to tie a skate with a brown and black dog nearby. A woman wearing a crimson-red skirt and a couple clad entirely in fur-lined black clothing look toward a man and woman riding a horse-drawn sled on the ice, at the lower center of the painting. Another black-draped form in the sleigh could be a second woman wearing a cloak. A pair of boys play a game like hockey in the lower right corner. People gather and skate in pairs and small groups, or ride in sledges into the deep distance. The buildings and boats lining the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition, are painted in shimmering grays. The sky above is the same cool white as the ice below. A few birds fly across the scene.
Hendrick Avercamp, A Scene on the Ice, c. 1625, oil on panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1967.3.1

A Scene on the Ice

Hendrick Avercamp · c. 1625 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1967.3.1

Shown from the chest up, a man with short, orange hair and green-tinted, pale skin looks at us, wearing a vivid blue painter's smock in this vertical portrait painting. His smock and the background are painted with long, mostly parallel strokes of cobalt, azure, and lapis blue. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his blue eyes. He has a long, slightly bumped nose, and his lips are closed within a full, rust-orange beard. He holds a palette and paintbrushes in his left hand, in the lower left corner of the canvas. The background is painted with long brushstrokes that follow the contours of his head and torso to create an aura-like effect.
Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1889, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.5

Self-Portrait

Vincent van Gogh · 1889 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1998.74.5