The Pancake Woman
Ackley, Clifford S. Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt. Exh. cat. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1981.
Barnes, Donna R., and Peter C. Rose. Childhood Pleasures: Dutch Children in Seventeenth Century. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2012.
Bartsch, Adam. Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment l’oeuvre de Rembrandt et ceux de ses principaux imitateurs. Vienna: A. Blumauer, 1797.
Bartsch, Adam. The Illustrated Bartsch: Rembrandt Harmensz. Vol. 50 (supplement), Van Rijn. Edited by Stephanie S. Dickey. New York: Abaris Books, 1993.
Benesch, Otto. The Drawings of Rembrandt. Vols. 1–2, 1625–1640. London: Phaidon Press: 1954.
Bevers, Holm, Peter Schatborn, and Barbara Welzel. Rembrandt: The Master and His Workshop: Drawings and Etchings. London: National Gallery Publications and Yale University Press, 1991.
Biörklund, George. Rembrandt’s Etchings, True and False; Concordance Table. [Stokholm]: Biörklund, 1953.
Biörklund, George, and Osbert H. Barnard. Rembrandt’s Etchings, True and False, a Summary Catalogue in a Distinctive Chronological Order. 2nd edition. Stockholm: George Biörklund, 1968.
Boon, Karel G. Rembrandt: Das graphische Werk. Vienna: Anton Schroll Verlag, 1963.
Dodgson, Campbell. A Complete Catalogue of Rembrandt’s Etchings. London: Seeley and Co., 1905.
Hind, Arthur Mayger. A Catalogue of Rembrandt’s Etchings, Chronologically Arranged and Completely Illustrated. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1967.
Hinterding, Erik. “The History of Rembrandt’s Copperplates, with a Catalogue of Those That Survive.” Simiolus 22, no. 4 (1993/4): 253–315.
Hinterding, Erik. “Rembrandt as an Etcher.” In Studies in Prints and Printmaking. Vol. 6. Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel, Netherlands: Sound & Vision, 2006.
Hinterding, Erik, Ger Luijten, and Martin Royalton-Kisch. Rembrandt the Printmaker. London: British Museum Press, 2000.
Hinterding, Erik, and Jaco Rutgers, eds. The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450–1700: Rembrandt, Text I 1625–1635. Edited by Ger Luijten. Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel, Netherlands: Sound & Vision, 2013.
Hoeven, Anke A. van Wagenberg-ter. “The Celebration of Twelfth Night in Netherlandish Art,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, vol. 12, no. 1/2 (1993–94): 65–96.
Münz, Ludwig. A Critical Catalogue of Rembrandt’s Etchings and the Etchings of His School Formerly Attributed to the Master. London: Phaidon Press, 1952.
Nowell-Usticke, G. W. Rembrandt’s Etchings: States and Values. Narberth, PA: Livingston Publishing Co., 1967.
Robinson, Franklin W. Dutch Life in the Golden Century: An Exhibition of Seventeenth Century Dutch Painting of Daily Life. St. Petersburg, FL: Museum of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg, 1975.
Schwartz, Gary. The Complete Etchings of Rembrandt, Reproduced in Original Size. New York: Dover, 1994.
Slive, Seymour. Rembrandt’s Drawings. Los Angeles: Getty Art Museum, 2009.
Stechow, W., and C. Comer. “The History of the Term Genre.” Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 35 (1975–76): 89–94.
Sutton, Peter C., and William W. Robinson. Drawings by Rembrandt, His Students and Circle. Exh. cat. Greenwich, CT: The Bruce Museum, 2011.
Trautscholdt, Eduard. “‘De Oude Koekebakster’: Nachtrag zu Adriaen Brouwer.” Pantheon 19, no. 4 (July–August, 1961): 187–94.
White, Christopher, and Karel G. Boon. Rembrandt’s Etchings: An Illustrated Critical Catalogue. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Van Gendt & Co., 1969.
Rembrandt van Rijn is considered one of the greatest Dutch painters and printmakers of the seventeenth century. Born in Leiden to affluent millers, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in 1624 to apprentice with the prominent history painter Pieter Lastman. He returned to Leiden by 1625 to establish his own studio. There, he was in creative competition with the artist Jan Lievens (1607–1674)—they shared models and depicted similar subject matter. Rembrandt became famous for his skill as a portraitist, and by 1631 he had moved to Amsterdam on a permanent basis, where he received artistic and financial success from a flourishing art market.1 The artist was at the height of his career in the 1630s and early 1640s. He had married Saskia van Uylenburgh, the relative of the prosperous art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh, purchased a luxurious house with a studio, received many commissions, and embraced his role as a teacher. During this time, he increased his production of etchings (a technique that he had learned in 1628) and created a lively market demand for them. Toward the end of his career, Rembrandt’s life was fraught with personal difficulties, including the death of his wife in 1640 and insolvency and the sale of his house and collections in the 1650s. Yet, he remained renowned, continuing to receive commissions for paintings and acquiring international recognition due to the wide dissemination of his prints. In 1669 Rembrandt was buried in Amsterdam’s Westerkerk, next to his companion, Hendrickje Stoffels, and his son, Titus.
Rembrandt drastically redefined the etching technique, approaching it with the inventiveness and fluidity of drawing. The artist experimented with the medium by reworking the printing plates numerous times and varying the inking of the plates and the types of paper. He portrayed a wide array of subjects, including portraits, historical and biblical themes, landscapes, and genre scenes.2
Images of everyday life were especially popular in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, and Rembrandt often observed the people and activities on the streets of Amsterdam and its surroundings. He recorded them in swiftly drawn pen-and-ink sketches as well as in etchings. This diminutive etching showcases a humble street corner where an old woman sits close to a warm outdoor stove baking pancakes; before her, a cat near a basket of apples surveys the exuberant activity.3 A cluster of hungry children surrounds the peddler of confections: one leans over her shoulder while fishing for a coin in his pocket; another sports a broad-brimmed hat and devours a pancake; a toddler leans in toward the low stove, and two other children boisterously play with a coin behind her. At left, a happy, full-bellied child rests on his mother’s lap, while a child in the near foreground anxiously avoids a pesky dog that is trying to steal his treat.4 A pen-and-ink drawing by Rembrandt also showcases the pancake woman, but with fewer customers (fig. 35.1).5
Rembrandt drew inspiration from the works of many other artists who had portrayed female pancake vendors; in about 1626, Jan van de Velde II produced an engraving of the subject, yet set at night within a dark interior illuminated by fire.6 Also, the inventory of Rembrandt’s possessions from 1656 lists a small painting of a koekebacher (cake baker) by the Flemish genre painter Adriaen Brouwer, who gained much esteem during his stay in Holland in the 1620s.7
A recipe for this baked good, the koeken, is listed under “all sorts of baked and cooked items,” along with puddings, porridges, fritters, and waffles in the prevailing Dutch cookbook of the seventeenth century, De Verstandige Kock of Zorgruldige Huyshouder (The Sensible Cook or the Painstaking Householder), which was utilized by the more affluent classes.8 Although pancakes were often made at home, they could also be purchased on the streets, where they were made by itinerant pancake makers, who were usually women. Pancakes were usually eaten daily and were also popular during the carnival season and on Shrove Tuesday, which follows the dietary restrictions of Lent on eggs, flour, and milk.9 Although sometimes pancakes and, therefore, their sellers, are connected to lust and the opulent life, more often they are linked to a full stomach and to a life well lived.
—Dena M. Woodall
Notes
1. See Peter Sutton and William W. Robinson, Drawings by Rembrandt, His Students and Circle (Greenwich, CT: The Bruce Museum, 2011), 17.2. Genre scenes also sometimes carry a moralizing intent. See W. Stechow and C. Comer, “The History of the Term Genre,” Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 35 (1975–76): 89–94.
3. Even though this small print has an accession number with the date of 1944, The Pancake Woman is not mentioned in the Catalogue of the Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection (The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1945). However, it was surely owned by the Straus family and accessioned later because it was found in 1979 either in the documents of the Straus Collection from 1944 or among the Straus papers given by Jack Straus, the nephew of Percy Straus, to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1968–69.
4. A drawing by Rembrandt of a child frightened by an attentive dog is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. See Rembrandt van Rijn, Woman with a Child Frightened by a Dog, c. 1635–36, pen and brown ink on paper, 17 1/8 x 5 3/4 inches (18.2 x 14.5 cm) [1589].
5. Rembrandt, The Pancake Baker, 1633–37, pen and brown ink on paper, 4 1/4 x 5 5/8 in. (10.8 x 14.4 cm), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-T-1891-A-2424. See Otto Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt, 1625–1640, vols. 1–2 (London: Phaidon Press, 1954), cat. 409, pl. 455; Seymour Slive, Rembrandt’s Drawings (Los Angeles: Getty Art Museum, 2009): 93, fig. 8.1. The copperplate for this print is still extant and in a private collection in the United States. See Erik Hinterding and Jaco Rutgers, eds., The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450–1700: Rembrandt, Text I 1625–1635, ed. Ger Luijten (Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel, Netherlands: Sound & Vision, 2013), I.233.144.III/VII.
6. Clifford S. Ackley, Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1981), 102–3, cat. 61.
7. Ackley, Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt, cat. 72. Pancake makers were a popular subject in Northern Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and imagery was produced in a variety of media. See, for example, Pieter Aertsen, The Pancake Bakery, 1560, oil on panel, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fight between Carnival and Lent, 1559, oil on panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Willem Pietersz. Buytewech, Pancake Woman, c. 1606–24, pen and gray wash on laid paper, Museum der blindenden Künste, Leipzig; Adriaen Brouwer, Pancake Baker, 1625, oil on panel, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Theodor Matham (after Adriaen Brouwer), Peasant Woman Baking Pancakes, 1620s–30s, etching on laid paper, British Museum, London; Cornelius Visscher, The Pancake Woman, c. 1650, engraving on laid paper, Rhode Island School of Design; Egbert van der Poel, A Pancake Woman, mid-17th century, oil on panel, The Detroit Institute of Arts, gift of Mrs. James E. Scripps, 09.18; Gerrit Dou, The Pancake Baker, c. 1650–55, oil on panel, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; Gabriel Metsu, The Pancake Seller, 1650s, oil on canvas, Girardet collection, Kettwig/Ruhr, and The Pancake Seller, 1650s, oil on panel, Wachtmeister Collection; and Jan Steen, The Pancake Seller, 1661–69, oil on canvas, Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester. To outline the chronology and history of this popular subject by Dutch artists, also see Eduard Trautscholdt, “‘De Oude Koekebakster’: Nachtrag zu Adriaen Brouwer,” Pantheon 19, no. 4 (July–August, 1961): 187–94.
8. See Peter C. Rose, “Edible Pleasures,” in Donna R. Barnes and Peter C. Rose, Childhood Pleasures: Dutch Children in Seventeenth Century (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2012), 14–27.
9. See Franklin W. Robinson, Dutch Life in the Golden Century: An Exhibition of Seventeenth Century Dutch Painting of Daily Life (St. Petersburg, FL: Museum of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg, 1975), 41, cat. 28. Pancakes were also served in a feast on an important familial celebration in seventeenth-century Netherlands on Twelfth Night (Epiphany or January 6). It is seen in a painting, Twelfth Night, 1635, private collection, by David Teniers the Younger. At left, an old cook is baking pancakes, surrounded by children and their parents. Waffles and pancakes were also considered buyck-verraet (stomach betrayal), since they would make the stomach swell only temporarily and were thought to be insubstantial food for work, only meant for children, and were synonymous with laziness. See Anke A. van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, “The Celebration of Twelfth Night in Netherlandish Art,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 12, no. 1/2 (1993–94): 78–80.
Comparative Images
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