In this grisaille by Adriaen van de Venne, a peasant farm labourer with a sheaf of hay under one arm and a milk maid with her pails balanced from a yoke over her shoulders gaze at one another, as they stand in an open field. The coarse features of the peasant’s face are suffused with passion and tenderness; she smiles in response to his adoring gaze, her mouth slightly open in some utterance. The peasant encircles the milkmaid’s waist with his arm, his fingers resting lightly on the stiff folds of her dress.

The warm brown tones of the painting evoke the warmth of a summer’s evening; the couple are standing in a mown field at harvest time. The artist uses bold touches of white to convey atmospheric effects: the sunlight illuminating the clouds, the shining folds of the milkmaid’s dress, the patch of sunlight behind the milkmaid and the glistening strands of the sheaf of hay. The undulating sweep of the bundle of hay is reiterated by the curve of the milkmaid’s pinafore as it flaps in the breeze.

The fluid, vigorous handling of paint in the present work is characteristic of van de Venne’s approach to low life genre scenes. The treatment of the stubbly ground on which the couple stands, their legs and boots, and the distant village is sketchy in character. In contrast, the artist’s portraits and high life scenes are painted in a smooth, finished manner, with meticulous attention to detail: compare the present picture to the van de Venne high life scene, executed in the same year: A Cavalier at his dressing table with a servant holding a mirror (see Johnny van Haeften, Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings, 2003, cat. no. 38). In contrast to the highly detailed interior of the latter, the artist has barely adumbrated the background of the present picture, giving prominence to the two figures. Like other seventeenth century Dutch artists, van de Venne purposefully adapted his style to suit the subject matter: a looser style was considered fitting to represent the lower classes of society.

The majority of the artist’s monochrome low life paintings are highly unusual in Dutch seventeenth century painting in that they depict not the working peasant, as exemplified by the present picture, but the outsiders of Dutch society: beggars, vagrants, cripples, prostitutes and thieves. These works departed from the example of Cornelis Bega, Adriaen Brouwer, and Adriaen van Ostade whose low life pictures portray the peasant at work or at leisure. Representative of many of van de Venne’s low life monochrome paintings is the grisaille Poor Luxury of 1635 (executed four years after our painting)[i], in which a smiling woman gestures toward the pathetic spectacle of cripples and beggars dancing to the tune of a hurdy-gurdy, inviting the viewer to share in her derision of them. Characteristically, van de Venne inscribed a banderole in the foreground of the painting with the savagely ironic words ‘Arme Weelde’ (Poor Luxury). The artist added such inscriptions to most of his monochrome paintings, lending them a literary and emblematic character which was in keeping with his work as a book illustrator and print maker.

In the present painting however, the absence of a moralising inscription suggests that it is neither meant to invite judgement nor incite hilarity; this is an honest working couple who court each other without lasciviousness. It is a sympathetic and touching portrayal of human love.

Adriaen van de Venne’s production of hundreds of grisailles and brunailles gives him a unique position in Dutch seventeenth century painting. No other artist worked so consistently in monochrome. Before him, monochrome paintings had been almost solely used to imitate sculpture, or in designs intended to be translated into prints. Van de Venne’s monochrome paintings were conceived and bought as finished works.[ii] Our painting was executed in 1631, after the artist’s move from Middelburg to The Hague, where he produced most of his monochrome works. He painted a broad range of subjects in monochrome, including high and low life genre themes, portraits and religious subjects.

Cornelis de Bie’s account of van de Venne in his Het Gulden Cabinet of 1661 is the only contemporary source of information on the artist’s youth and training. According to de Bie, he was born to parents from the Southern Netherlands who had fled to Delft to escape the war. Van de Venne’s early study of Latin may have inspired him to become an illustrator and he is said to have received instruction from an obscure Leiden goldsmith, Simon de Valck. His second teacher, Hieronymus van Diest, is also unknown but appears to have been a painter of grisailles: Houbraken refers to a Jeronimus van Diest as a ‘fine painter in tones of grey.’[iii] Van de Venne is recorded as being in Middelburg from 1614-1624, where much of his work as a book illustrator and print designer took place. He made designs for the illustrations of the publications of Jacob Cats, which contributed to the popularity of emblem books. During this period he mostly painted colourful landscapes in the Flemish tradition. From 1618 he made designs for prints on a larger scale, for example the portraits of Prince Maurits and Frederick Hendrick which were engraved by Willem Jacobsz. Delff and purchased by the States General. The album of 105 miniatures in the British Museum suggests that he may have been employed by the House of Orange or the court of the Winter King and Queen. Van de Venne produced his own literary works including the Tafereel van de belacchende werelt (Picture of the Ridiculous World) after his move to The Hague in 1631, where he served several times as deacon and once as dean in the city’s St. Luke’s guild. He was one of the founders of Pictura, the artist’s confraternity established in The Hague in 1665. Van de Venne had married in 1614, and had two sons who also became painters, Pieter (1624-57), a still life painter, and Huybrecht (1635-c.1676), who, according to de Bie, painted in his father’s style, although none of his work has come to light today.

[i] In the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, No. 1896

[ii] Although there is some debate amongst scholars about when van de Venne’s first monochrome works were executed, there is some agreement that the earliest dated grisaille is Wretched, executed in 1621, in Amsterdam, The Rijksmuseum, no. C607. See F. Lammertse et al, Dutch Genre Paintings of the 17^th Century, Collection of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1998, p. 180, and M. Royalton-Kisch, ‘Adriaen van de Venne’, in The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 26.5.03) at http: //www.groveart.com

[iii] A. Houbraken, Der Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen, vol. 1, Amsterdam, 1718, p. 136. His source was probably Cornelis de Bie.