Lot 1095 | Church Interior

BUESEM, JAN JANSZ.
Amsterdam 1600 ca. - 1649 ca.


Title: Church Interior.
Noble people infront of a dutch church choir.
Technique: Oil on wood.
Measurement: 106 x 77cm.
Notation: Signed right on a gravestone: Ian Buesem.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Provenance:
Allegedly since 1920 in the director's office of the hospital in Arnhem;
Private collection, Europe.

Not much is known about the life of the painter Jan Jansz. Buesem. He was probably born in Amsterdam in 1599 and died there in 1649 or 1655. Buesem was a pupil of Pieter Jansz Quast and, like him, painted predominantly rural genre depictions.
In addition, Jan Buesem painted few church interiors, such as this impressive painting.

The view falls from a shaded round arch, which is cut off by the upper edge of the image, into a light-flooded nave. If the eye wanders through this architecture, it encounters dogs, church-goers, individually or in pairs, a beggar sitting on the ground and in the depths, separated from the front church room by a staircase and a rood screen, in front of the altar three clerics in white habits, possibly Dominicans.
It is not clear whether the room is the main nave of the church. The painter was probably not really interested in the topography of the place. He rather seems to have taken pleasure in the finely chiselled wealth of forms of the Gothic church with its many details such as the shaded pulpit, the holy water basin, the high grave on the left and the choir screen on the right. His description goes so far as to also note the cracks in the stone steps or in the richly decorated cross-rib vault. Jan Jansz Buesem placed his signature on a gravestone on the right side of the pavement.
This market-fresh painting, which - according to oral tradition - has been in the room of the director of Arnhem Hospital for over 100 years, is of exceptional quality within his work and will perhaps help to place this hitherto little-researched artist in a better historical context.