MAN, Cornelis de

From about the mid-1660s onward, De Man painted stylish genre scenes that incorporate ideas adopted from works by De Hooch, Vermeer, and their contemporaries. The Man Weighing Gold is one of de Man’s best-known and most beautiful genre paintings. In a comfortable interior, a gentleman weighs gold at a table watched by a seated woman, perhaps his wife. The artist cleverly suggests the chill of early morning by the thick garments worn by the pair, the woman’s pose, the crumpled bedding beside the box bed, and the presence of a young servant placing peat in the hearth to ignite a fire. The perspective system is constructed upon an oblique, dual-point system. This complex system was common in paintings of church interiors, particularly in Delft, and de Man was undoubtedly familiar with it from his own, earlier renditions of such spaces. The conspicuous floor tiles and beamed ceiling intensify the illusionistic effects of the perspective as does the richly carved wainscoting and mantelpiece.

This late work of Cornelis de Man was formerly attributed to Pieter de Hooch. The painting is firmly rooted in the Delft tradition then being established by Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer. De Man’s interest in the orderly depiction of interior space in this painting, for example, clearly reveals his awareness of his younger townsmen.

This picture is one of the finest and most likely one of the earliest architectural views by Cornelis de man, who took up the subject of actual church interiors when he was already in his forties.

Formerly the painting was attributed to the Rotterdam painter Anthonie de Lorme, who painted many views of the interior of Laurenskerk.

The painting shows the interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft, from the southern aisle to the northern transept, with elegant couples, and men digging in the foreground.

Formerly this painting was attributed to the Amsterdam painter Esias Boursse. It is not surprising since Cornelis de Man and Esias Boursse were both clearly much influenced by the work of their Delft contemporaries Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer. The feature of the prominent fireplace on the right side of the composition appears to have been a favourite of de Man’s, and a very similar compositional arrangement recurs in his most famous work, the Chess players of around 1670.

The genre painting of the later period of the 17th century is well represented by Cornelis de Man.

In this picture we see a homely room in which a well-groomed gentleman and an elegantly gowned lady are playing chess. The cat, logs, and bellows near the hearth all contribute to the atmosphere of pleasant domesticity which is somewhat marred by the man’s affected gestures and the woman’s backward glance at the onlooker. The placing of the hands and figures is rather artificial in its ingenuity but the painting of the curtains and the other fabrics is superbly realistic.

In the first half of the seventeenth century, Jan Mayen Island and Spitsbergen were used as whaling bases by the Noordse Compagnie (Dutch Northern Company). This painting shows the company settlement on Jan Mayen Island, with the snow-clad peak known as Beerenberg in the background. In the foreground we can see the whale-oil factory in operation. On the left, a whale is being ‘flensed’. On the right, the strips of blubber are being chopped up on wooden tables and boiled in huge vats. The resulting whale-oil was used for a number of different purposes.