The genre painter Jacob Duck was born around 1660, most likely in Utrecht.  After training initially as a goldsmith, he switched to painting, becoming a master in the Utrecht painters’ guild around 1628.  Apart from a brief period in The Hague, Duck spent all his working life in Utrecht. 

Duck was one of the most gifted of a circle of painters who came to be known collectively as guardroom painters.  The artists in this group specialised in depictions of the lives of off-duty soldiers, or cortegaerdjes, as this category was known in the seventeenth century, after the French term corps de garde, meaning guardroom.  The other principal exponents of guardrooms included Pieter Codde (1599-1678), Willem Duyster (c. 1598-1635) and Simon Kick (1603-1652) in Amsterdam, and Anthonie Palamedesz. (1601-1673) in Delft.  Duck was the only painter in Utrecht to have extensively addressed this subject and he apparently did so throughout his career.  Although it is difficult to trace his development because he only dated a handful of his paintings, his earliest dated work from 1628 depicts a guardroom interior as does this, his last known dated painting from 1655. Duck produced mainly cabinet-sized paintings, but occasionally he worked on a much larger scale.  In addition to guardrooms, he painted brothel scenes, merry companies, fortune-tellers, allegories and a few portraits and domestic interiors.

Military life was a topical theme in the Netherlands in the first half of the seventeenth century.  For much of this period the Dutch were embroiled in a protracted war of independence against Spain.  The Twelve Year Truce (1609-21) brought a brief respite in the fighting, but its expiration gave rise to a renewal of hostilities.  Although much of the fighting in these years was confined to the southern border and the eastern provinces, all the major towns of Holland housed garrisons of troops.  Soldiers were thus a constant feature of everyday life and their often disreputable activities provided a rich source of subject-matter for genre painters.  Whereas Flemish painters focused mainly upon battles, cavalry skirmishes, and scenes of plundering, the Dutch more often portrayed soldiers in their leisure hours, wiling away their time in idle pursuits, such as drinking, smoking, gambling and whoring, whilst awaiting the call to arms.

The exceptionally well-preserved painting is one of Duck’s finest treatments of the guardroom theme.  A young officer is seated in a relaxed manner in the left foreground, gazing directly at the viewer.  The partly furled standard propped against the back of his chair, with one end resting on a military drum, identifies him as the ensign, or standard-bearer, of a militia company.  His costume consists of a grey jacket and breeches, and white stockings.  He wears an elegant, plumed hat and a rapier attached to a baldric that passes diagonally across his chest.  Holding a small baton held in his left hand, he directs our attention to the back of the room, where three soldiers are sitting around a table playing cards for money.  In the far right corner, an old woman sits by a fireplace smoking a pipe.  A clear beam of daylight entering through a window on the left illuminates the interior with great clarity, revealing the general clutter of military gear.  Leaning up against the windowsill are a rapier, a musket, a furket (a staff with a u-shaped iron mount at one end for supporting a musket while shooting), and a bandolier of charges.  Hanging on the wall further back is a cuirass, and, below it, another bandolier, with leather-covered casings containing gunpowder hanging from it.  Scattered across the floor are bits of broken clay pipes, pieces of straw, a scrap of paper containing tobacco and an overturned jug.  A brazier of ashes and a pipe stand in the left-hand corner.  Nearby, a small brown and white dog gnaws on a bone.

Duck’s refined manner and his ability to depict a variety of fabrics and materials convincingly is seen here to great advantage.  A great deal of care has been lavished on the details of the officers’ clothing, the military paraphernalia and the other still-life elements.  All this has been achieved within a richly subtle yet limited palette of greys, ochres and greenish brown hues.  The only splashes of eye-catching colour are the white, blue and orange of the standard, colours that had special significance: the white symbolised peace, blue stood for loyalty and justice, and orange represented courage and the of House of Orange.

In the seventeenth century, the role of the ensign, or standard-bearer, was an important one, symbolising leadership and unity in military and ceremonial contexts[i].  Standard-bearers were required to be of good birth, and given their high mortality rate in times of war, militia regulations stipulated that they must be unmarried.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE PAINTER

The exact date of Jacob Duck’s birth is unknown, but it is generally accepted that he was born around 1600.  His parents Jan Jansz. Duck, who came from Vleuten, a village near Utrecht, and Maria Bool were married on 10 January 1596.  In 1660, Jacob appeared before a notary in The Hague and declared that he was about sixty years old.  Little is known about his father, but his mother was a cloth merchant, who, in 1617 was conducting her business from the family home on the Donkere Gaard in Utrecht, not far from the cathedral.  The couple had at least seven children, of whom Jacob was probably the second son.  In 1611, Duck was apprenticed to a goldsmith, and eight years later he became a master in the goldsmiths’ guild, however, it is unclear whether he was ever very active in that trade.  Already in 1621, he was listed in the painters’ guild of St. Luke as an apprentice to Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot (1586-1666) although there is little trace of the latter’s influence on Duck’s art.  Eight year later, he donated a painting of a musical company to St. John’s Hospice, and about the same time he registered as a master painter in the guild.  The guild reduced his entrance fee because he was already a full member of the Goldsmiths’ Guild.  By 1631, Duck was referring to himself explicitly as a painter, although he retained his membership of the Goldsmith’s Guild until 1642.  In 1636, Duck consigned a painting to an auction in Haarlem, but there is no reason to believe that he ever lived in Haarlem.  His name crops up regularly in documents in Utrecht in 1636 and in subsequent years. 

In April 1620, Duck married Rijckgen Croock in a civil ceremony, from which we may infer that they were Catholic, an assumption strengthened by the fact that two of Jacob’s brothers and an uncle were Catholic priests.  Like her mother-in-law, Rijckgen Croock was a cloth merchant.  Her father, Jacob Croock, was a linen merchant, and after his death in 1643, she took over the business.  At that time, she and her husband were living on the Donkere Gaard, probably in his parents’ house.  Because the records of Catholic baptisms in this period in Utrecht have been lost, no records survive of the baptisms of the couple’s children, of whom there were at least eight.  In June 1648, Duck’s wife died, leaving him with six unmarried daughters.  At the time, the couple had been living in a rented house on the Nieuwegracht, near the Magdalenabrug.  Although there is evidence that Duck’s paintings fetched relatively high prices, there are signs that he was already experiencing financial difficulties.  In 1649, he signed documents confirming that he was unable to pay his rent.  Around 1660, he moved to The Hague, but he seems to have returned to Utrecht quite soon, where he died in bankruptcy on or just before 21 January 1667.  Owing to the fact that his debts exceeded the value of his estate, his daughters declined their inheritance. Duck was buried in the chapel of the Convent of St. Mary Magdalen in Utrecht. 

Jacob Duck was actively involved with the artistic community in Utrecht.  His family were well acquainted with Abraham Bloemaert, and Jacob had links with a number of his fellow painters.  In 1644, he collaborated with Cornelis van Poelenburgh (1594-1667), Jan Both (1618-1652), and Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613-1670) in a commission to paint a portrait of the leading Utrecht collector Baron Vincent van Wyttenhorst.  He also occasionally collaborated with the marine painter Adam Willaerts (1577-1664) and Abraham van Cuylenborch (c. 1610-1658).  His works entered important collections, including those of the notary Thomas Robijn and the lawyer Jacob van Rosdendall, both from The Hague.  One of his guardroom scenes, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, was listed in the 1659 inventory of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s collection in Vienna.[ii]