In the paintings of the Dutchman van Ostade, naked peasants were painted over

LOS ANGELES. 17th century Dutch painter Isaac van Ostade always considered a calmer artist than his brother and teacher Adrian (Adriaen van Ostade) known for its funny and sometimes impudent scenes from the everyday life of peasants. However, a recent restoration of a painting from the British Royal Collection showed that the younger brother also sometimes showed unpretentious humor when writing his paintings, depicting, for example, a man who was writing. And the other day, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena shared a similar discovery: in a 1641 painting by van Ostade Jr., restorers found a peasant committing an act of defecation.

Isaac van Ostade - Peasants butcher a pig in front of a rural house (1641). Before restoration.

“For a long time, people thought of Isaac as the more modest and less scandalous of the two brothers, the author of calm scenes from the everyday life of peasants,” said Carol Togneri, chief curator of the Norton Simon Museum. - “Now we see his rough side.”

Both brothers worked in their native Harlem in the then developing field of genre painting, depicting ordinary life and not touching biblical, historical or mythological themes. Adrian drew more sketches in the interior, while Isaac - surprisingly prolific, given that he died at age 28 - gravitated to portraying people and landscapes.

As for the painting from the British Royal Collection, on the restored canvas “Village Fair With a Church Behind”, owned by Queen Elizabeth and currently on the register of Dutch painting at Buckingham Palace, the peasant crouches taking off his pants some distance from the crowd. Roughly in 1903, the figure of a peasant was "turned" into a bush, which was more in line with the tastes of that time. By the way, Queen Victoria, for example, defined the style of Dutch paintings in her collection as "low."

It is not known who and when “finished” the picture from the collection of the Norton Simon Museum “The Peasant Near the Farm Where They Cut the Pig” (Peasants Outside a Farmhouse Butchering Pork). Californian industrialist Norton Simon acquired the canvas in 1969 from a dealer in Amsterdam. By that time, the picture showed all the signs of respectable age: yellowed layers of varnish, horizontal cracks along the central part of the wooden panel. However, it also showed signs of partial restoration, including in the lower left corner, where a man dressed in green pants was sitting on a chair and seemed to be watching how the butchers were carving a pig.

In the place where the seated person was depicted, “the paint was smoother, more opaque and not as thin as the rest of the canvas, which was a little suspicious,” said Devi Ormond, restorer of the Getty Museum, who and worked on a painting commissioned by the Norton Simon Museum over the past two years (small museums often transfer paintings for restoration to larger centers). Ormond decided to conduct additional research, illuminating the picture on an x-ray, and also tried to partially remove the top coat of paint at high magnification with a scalpel.

Under green pants, she saw an orange dye that matched the skin tone of other characters. The painted chair, as it turned out, was also not related to the original picture, hiding the half-naked figure.

Devi Ormond made her first discovery in 2014, but only in November of this year she completed her work. Speaking about the painting, she noted that when high-ranking officials visited her studio, Van Ostada’s painting had to be turned in such a way as not to confuse anyone with the image on it.

In the Norton Simon Museum, the canvas was provided with an explanatory inscription: "During the restoration, it was discovered that the man in the lower left corner decided to answer the challenge of nature."

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru