Very little is known about the life of Pieter Janssens Elinga. A native of Bruges, he moved to the Dutch Republic sometime before 1653, when he is documented as living in Rotterdam.  That same year, he relocated to Amsterdam and probably remained there for the rest of his life.  He apparently combined his activities as an artist with those of a musician.  Janssens Elinga painted still lifes and domestic genre scenes.  The latter attest to the influence of the art of Pieter de Hooch (1629-after 1684) from the late 1650s and 1660s, and in the past were often misattributed to the more famous painter.  His interiors reveal an interest in perspective effects. A few signed paintings by the artist are known, but none are dated. 

In this intimate painting, Janssens Elinga depicted a spacious, light-filled room, with tall, mullioned windows and white-washed walls.  Somewhat unusually, human activities are absent from this scene, thus allowing us to focus fully on the features of the room.  Unimpeded, the eye can roam freely around the interior and across the neatly chequered floor to the fireplace, lined with Delft tiles, and the tall mantle supported by black marbled columns.  A suite of green-velvet-covered chairs and a table covered with a green cloth are carefully arranged around the outside of the room, and an enclosed bed, draped with green curtains, appears on the left.  A few paintings hung high adorn the walls: a mother and child hangs above the fireplace, while to the right is a candlelit church interior, and above the doorway, a Flemish landscape.  A small mirror in a black ebony frame hangs on the wall between the windows.  An open doorway on the left invites the possibility that the inhabitants of this stylish dwelling might at any moment enter the room. 

Typically, Janssens Elinga’s indoor scenes are peopled with one or more usually female figures involved in domestic occupations. A maid sweeping the floor features quite often: sometimes, the lady of the house is depicted, seated quietly reading a book, or a letter, or even playing a small guitar.  In one painting, an elegantly dressed woman stands before a window holding a string of pearls[i].  All these scenes of everyday life are characterised by an atmosphere of quiet restraint.  This depiction of an empty room is, however, not unique in Janssens Elinga’s oeuvre, an Interior without Figures[ii], one of only two signed interiors by the artist, was formerly in the Brockhaus Collection, Leipzig, and likewise remains silent and deserted as if the artist wanted us to appreciate his command of linear perspective without distraction from anecdotal details.  Here, the geometric pattern of the tiled floor ensures a convincing and logical sense of recession, with the vanishing point centred on the back of the fireplace.  In another painting, in the Glasgow Art Galleries, Janssens Elinga depicted an interior that closely resembles our painting, but for a few minor details, however, in that work he included the figure of a young woman playing with a dog[iii]. 

Although the interior depicted here is very likely imaginary, many of its features accord with what we know of seventeenth-century middle-class Dutch homes.  A room such as this would have served as the front room of the house.  It was not unusual at this time to find a bed in the main reception room.  During this period, wealthy home-owners were only just beginning to differentiate between living rooms and bedchambers and a combination of the two functions was not uncommon.  This painting also reflects the value placed by the Dutch on cleanliness and proper household management.  The home was at the heart of Dutch family life and it was the responsibility of a wife to keep it spick and span and supervise the smooth running of domestic affairs.  An outwardly clean and tidy house was seen as a reflection of the inner virtues of its owner.  Foreign visitors to the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century often remarked upon the orderly appearance of Dutch homes, among them the well-travelled Englishman Peter Munday, who was obviously impressed, describing them as “wonderful Nett and cleane”[iv]. 

Genre paintings by Pieter Janssens Elinga can be found in The Alte Pinakothek, Munich; The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; The Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; the Hallwylska Museum, Stockholm and The Bredius Museum, in The Hague.

BIOGRAPHY

The son of the painter Gisbrecht Janssens and Catherine van Assene, Pieter Janssens Elinga was baptised in Bruges, in Flanders, on 18 August 1623.  Although he probably received his early artistic training from his father, who died when Pieter was fourteen, his name does not appear in the register of the local painters’ guild.  On 22 August 1653, following the death of his first wife, Beatrix van der Mijlen, an inventory of his effects was made in Rotterdam, where he had apparently been working for some time.  The inventory, taken by the Chamber of Orphans to protect the interests of the couple’s child, indicates that the artist had financial difficulties.  Later in the same year, Elinga moved to Amsterdam, where he became a citizen on 16 March 1657 at which time he described himself as a musician.  A violin and three cornets are listed in the inventory taken after his first wife died[v].  He probably continued to paint alongside his activities as a musician since a 1661 inventory of the possessions of Anthonie Pannekoeck of Amsterdam included a vanitas painting by Janssens Elinga.  By 1662, Pieter and his second wife, Jurina Bos, were living on the Breestraat, the street where Rembrandt lived between 1639 and 1658.  The couple had four children: Johannes, François, Johanna, and Magtilda.  It is not known when the artist died, but his wife was documented as a widow in Amsterdam on 10 June 1682[vi].