Old Woman by a Fireplace
1660 - 1664. Oil on panel.Not on display
This painting is ascribed to the school of Teniers in the royal collections, although after entering the Prado it is listed in the catalogue as an original work by that painter. This raises the question of when the signature D. Ten. on the lower right was added. The 1873 Prado publication describes this signature as apocryphal and assigns the painting to Hendryk Martensz. Rokes, called Sorgh or Zorgh (1610/11-1670). This attribution is maintained until the 1920 edition, although as early as 1885 it is pointed out that Bredius and Schmidt- Degener consider it to be the work of Brekelenkam. This authorship is accepted by the Museum in 1933 and, during the technical study conducted for the purpose of this catalogue, it is corroborated by ultraviolet fluorescence, which reveals the original signature and part of the date beneath the apocryphal signature.
Old Woman by a Fireplace is one of the typical domestic scenes painted by Brekelenkam in the 1660s featuring elderly people engaged in a variety of tasks, seated holding a book or, as in this case, engrossed in their thoughts. As in all of them, the scene here is set in a countrystyle kitchen that is framed on one side -in this case on the left- by a large hearth and in the background by a wooden wall. The tones are based on a range of browns and greens with touches of red, orange and white, on which the light is concentrated, although there is no defined light source, either external or internal. The contrast between the powerful modelling and impasto brushwork of certain areas -the old woman`s torso and hands, household utensils and foodstuffs- and the loose, flowing handling of the woman`s skirt and the rest of the composition is worthy of notice. This treatment is characteristic of Brekelenkam after 1655, when the attention to detail and meticulous technique derived from Gerard Dou (1613-1675) and the fijnschilder (fine painters) gave way to a more sweeping, flowing style with blurred contours that is closer to Gabriël Metsu (1629-1667). This is the same handling found, for example, in Old Woman scaling Fish, signed and dated in 1660 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Old Woman by the Fireplace, dated in 1662 (Kunstsammlung Düsseldorf), and Two Men by the Fireside, signed and dated in 1664 (Paris, Musée du Louvre) (Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, p. 300).
