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After Adriaen van de Venne (1589-1662)

Two owls skating c.1630-40

Engraving and etching. Cassiano Type A mount | 21.8 x 15.6 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 807493

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  • An engraving with etching of two owls. In this print two owls are pictured skating on ice, each in seventeenth-century dress and carrying a mouse attached to a string.

    This print is a pair to that on the next folio (RCIN 807494, a cat and a dog dancing with rats, c.1630-40). It was copied from an engraving probably produced in the first years of the seventeenth century that shows the same pair of owls skating on a lake, with a windmill and a farmhouse in the background providing a distinctively Dutch context (Franken 1878, no. 36; Holl.xi.348 [as Jacob Matham]; Holl.xxxv.19 [Anon after Van de Venne]). The original composition is a painting by Adriaen van de Venne in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (Plokker 1984, no. 43; Spielmann / Drees 1997, no. 453) that has the caption Hoe dienen wiy bij een! ('How well we go together'). In the painting the owl wearing the fur hat has spectacles tied to a string held in his beak, which in the prints have been replaced by a mouse. The print in this album eliminates all background detail to concentrate on the subject and the message related by the inscription along the bottom – that because times are now so corrupt, distinctions of rank or class are so unrecognisable that even owls are dressed as men (Griffiths 1993, no. 154). Given that owls were associated with the night and sinister activities, their representation in a human guise would have reinforced the disturbing implications.

    This print is lettered along the bottom: "Lexcez est a tel point, quen ce temps ou nous sommes / On ne peut discerner qualite ny degrez // Estats, rangs, dignitez, profanes ou sacrez / Et mesmes les hyboux y sont parez en hommes // le Blond. excudit Avec preuilege du Roy".

    Van de Venne was a specialist in proverbial and comic scenes and produced a large number of grisailles, most of which are peasant genre subjects. Only Leblond's name is recorded on the print, not his address. He was active in Paris from around 1630.

    This print is inlaid in folio 22 of the Dutch Drolls album (RCIN 970362).This album originally contained 99 prints on 72 folios, with the prints numbered 1-99 in pencil in a nineteenth-century hand on the mount sheet above each print. A number of other prints were added later, mostly on the versos of the existing sheets and on two additional folios at the end of the album (fols 73-74), probably during the nineteenth century.

    Text adapted from Mark McDonald, The Print Collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo. I: Ceremonies, Costumes, Portraits and Genre. The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné, C.I, London 2016, cat. no.395.
    Provenance

    From the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-22 October 1657); inherited by his brother, Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo (1606-1689); sold by Carlo Antonio's grandson to Clement XI, 1703; acquired by Cardinal Alessandro Albani by 1714, from whom purchased by George III in 1762

  • Medium and techniques

    Engraving and etching. Cassiano Type A mount

    Measurements

    21.8 x 15.6 cm (sheet of paper)

    Markings

    watermark: Hills 9, see Mark McDonald, The Print Collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo. I: Ceremonies, Costumes, Portraits and Genre, 3 vols, Royal Collection Trust 2017, part of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné, p.265.

  • Alternative title(s)

    Two owls on skates


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