- Sale, Johannes Caudri, Amsterdam (P. van der Schley, J. Yver, C.S. Roos), 6 September 1809 sqq., no. 77 (‘op koper, hoog 7, breed 5 duim [17.9 x 12.9 cm], Eene bevallige Vrouw, halver lijf te zien, gekleed in ‘t wit Satijn, hebbende een Roosje in haar hand; delicaat gepenceeld’), fl. 40, to the dealer Louis-Bernard Coclers (1741-1817), Liège;1

- Collection Madame Nouette-Delorme, London; her sale, Paris (F. Lair-Dubreuil et al.), 17 June 1914 sqq., no. 46 (‘L’Odorat, une belle fille dans tout l’épanouissement de sa luxuriante nature, fraiche et souriante, tient une rose de la main gauche. Elle est habillée de blanc, drapée d’une écharpe bleue … cuivre. Haut., 16 cent.; large., 13’), fr 1060;2

- Sale, The Duke of Atholl et al. (‘The Property of a Gentleman’), London (Christie’s), 13 December 1996, no. 1, £ 38,900

- The dealer Johnny van Haeften, London, 1997, where acquired by a private collector, by whom sold at

- Anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 7 July 2022, no. 150

A young woman smells a rose, elegantly pinched between index finger and thumb. This jewel-like sultry picture painted on a tiny slate of copper plunges the beholder into a dreamy world full of sensory impressions. We can almost inhale the flower’s scent and feel the breeze that lifts the young woman’s brown curly locks. The artist indulged in the perfect illusion of a range of surface textures, from the cool and gleaming pearl to the pretty girl’s warm skin. The variety is astonishing: stone, silk satin, skin, linen, fur, hair and the frail petals of the flowers, all cleverly juxtaposed to create interesting contrasts (warm and cold, hard and soft, dry and moist, etc.). Above all, the viewer’s glance is directed to the woman’s décolleté framed by ruffled linen, the satin gown and shawl.

This emphasis on deceptively rendered materials through meticulous execution on a tiny scale was the primary attraction in works by the Leiden Feinmaler, a school of painters founded by Rembrandt’s first pupil Gerrit Dou (1613-75), who excelled in highly finished cabinet pictures that commanded astronomical prices and were bought by the great collectors of the day. Dou trained many pupils and attracted a wide following, especially in his hometown Leiden, but his influence soon extended to other cities in the Netherlands. Before long, Ary de Vois had converted to the fine painters’ polished manner.

Born into a musically gifted, catholic family Ary de Vois was the son of Alewijn de Vois, organist of Utrecht’s Domkerk, and Maria van Haesbrouck. He first trained in Utrecht with Nikolaus Knupfer (1603-09-55), specialized in small-scaled Biblical and Mythological subject matter, completing his education in Leiden with Abraham van den Tempel (1622/23-70), noted for his life-sized portraits and allegorical themes.[1] De Vois’s earliest works, among which a small landscape with cattle of 1650 is the earliest dated example, already display the hallmarks of the Leiden Feinmaler style.[2] The present small work exemplifies De Vois’s highly personal pictorial language that combines a bright palette with minute observation and a masterly handling of the brush.

De Vois executed allegorical and mythological subjects that stylistically remind of his teacher Van den Tempel. A distinct category are his amusing tronies of rowdy soldiers and peasants smoking or drinking. The counterpart in De Vois’s oeuvre are a small group of idyllic depictions of shepherds and shepherdesses. Although not explicitly recognizable as a shepherdess, our picture unmistakably breathes an arcadian mood. The painting is related to the artist’s Shepherdess Holding a Rose in Dresden, Gemäldegalerie (fig. 1). The motif of smelling a rose recurs in yet another work by De Vois showing a woman, probably representing the goddess Venus, with a spaniel in park-like scenery.[3]

De Vois often painted pairs and his Hunter with Gun in the Mauritshuis (which includes a self-portrait) was most likely intended as the companion piece to the Dresden picture.[4] It is possible that our painting also had a pendant.[5] According to Alois Lipka the artist had used his wife, Marya van der Vecht, whom he had married in January 1656, as a model for the woman in our painting.[6] However, her portrait, the pendant to the artist’s self-portrait in the Louvre (inv. no. 1933), is preserved in the York City Gallery (inv. YORAG : 757) and there is little similarity between the two women noticeable. It is conceivable that De Vois used an existing person as a model because the same woman can be recognized in other paintings by De Vois, notably his Young Woman Feeding a Parrot in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (SK-A- 458), where she even wears the exact same dress (fig. 2).

Fig. 1, Ary de Vois, Shepherdess Holding a Flower,

Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

Fig. 2, Ary de Vois,

A Young Woman Feeding a Parrot,

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

The delicate eroticism and mundane frivolity of this picture are a far cry from the moralizing genre scenes by Gerrit Dou set in typically Dutch contemporary domestic interiors, crowded with household utensils. The idiom of De Vois is instead indebted to the more timeless courtly style Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) had developed in his portraits of the English nobility and which by mid-century had become part of the vernacular in Dutch painting. Graceful gestures, loose draperies and park-like backdrops, like in the present, were part and parcel of that new mode.    

It has been suggested that the woman in our painting personifies the sense of smell, which would imply the picture is part of a series of five, each representing one of the Five Senses. Even if the senses are the picture’s focal concern, the rose in this case, however, is more likely intended as a symbol of love. More specifically it could refer to the transience of physical beauty, for instance that of the seductive woman herself. She is indirectly derived from the half-length figures of partly undressed courtesans made popular in sixteenth-century Venice by Palma Vecchio (1480-1528), Titian (1488-90-1576) and Paris Bordone (1500-71). The Venetian examples were known in the Netherlands and reinterpreted by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Rembrandt (1605-69), to mention a few leading masters. The fur-lined garment of De Vois’s pretty protagonist which recurs in other tronie-like women by the artist and thus was a studio prop, in particular alludes to such works by Titian and his followers featuring sensual women in furs. After all, who wants, can read a moral message in this picture just like in Dou’s scenes: beware of this lady, she is beautiful but vain, and besides, her beauty will vanish like the fleeting flagrance of the flower she holds.

De Vois himself was a vain man and idled away much time. His known oeuvre is small and consists of about eighty paintings, and a much smaller number of drawings. The reason for this meagre output is explained by his biographer Arnold Houbraken who wrote that he married a wealthy woman and didn’t need to paint anymore. He only took up painting again when the couple had run out of money. Archival evidence confirms the existence of financial troubles and corroborates Houbraken’s statement to a certain extent.

De Vois’s colleague Willem Verschuring (1660-1726) made a beautiful mezzotint after our painting that is dated 1686 (fig. 3). Our undated work can be located in the 1670s on the basis of the hairstyle and is mature production. Willem Verschuring was the son of the painter Hendrick Verschuring (1627-90). Both worked and lived in Gorinchem and belonged to the city’s elite. The latter was a burgomaster and the son also became a member of the city government.[7] It is unknown in which collection De Vois’s painting was when Willem Verschuring made his print but one wonders if his father was the picture’s first owner at the time.  

The picture’s first recorded owner was Johannes Caudri (1723-1809), a bookkeeper at the East India Company who was responsible for payment of the salaries of the VOC personnel. His choice collection was auctioned after his decease in Amsterdam in 1809 and included two other pictures by De Vois and still-known first-rate genre paintings by Jan Steen (1626-79), Jacob Ochtervelt (1634-82) and the Woman Holding a String of Pearls by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) presently in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

Fig. 3, Willem Verschuring after Ary de Vois,

A Young Shepherdess Smelling a Rose, mezzotint,

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Notes