Egbert van der Poel, Dutch, 1621-1664: Family in an Interior at Night, c. 1650-55 

This work by the Delft artist Egbert Lieven­sz van der Poel dis­plays his pen­chant for explor­ing the sub­tle light­ing effects cre­at­ed by fire and lamp­light at night. Draw­ings by the artist are exceed­ing­ly rare, per­haps num­ber­ing no more than ten sheets.1

In this signed and fin­ished draw­ing, strong light emanates from a lamp hang­ing from a post set on the table, cre­at­ing a study in reflec­tions across fig­ures and objects. The man, woman, and one of their chil­dren have their hands spread out to warm them­selves over a mod­est fire placed in a bra­zier on the floor, while a sec­ond child can be seen in the shad­ows to the right. Farm imple­ments estab­lish the rural set­ting and the occu­pa­tion of the hus­band, and the over­all image is one of com­pla­cent har­mo­ny among sim­ple sur­round­ings. Their com­pla­cen­cy, how­ev­er, seems col­ored by a cer­tain hard­ship. The fam­i­ly sits in a cold room in tat­tered clothes, with only a sparse pile of kin­dling by the farmer’s feet. No obvi­ous food or food stores are in plain sight, but rather a num­ber of sug­ges­tive­ly empty pitch­ers, plates, and bas­kets. Enhanc­ing the poignan­cy of the scene is that the moth­er has just fin­ished breast­feed­ing her tod­dler son, who hud­dles for warmth between her legs, hold­ing his hands above the fire in imi­ta­tion of hers.2

Although he remains under­stud­ied today, Van der Poel was a rel­a­tive­ly pop­u­lar artist in Delft, join­ing the guild there in 1650 after hav­ing already been active as a painter for about a decade.3

He appears to have known Johannes Ver­meer (1632– 1675) and his fam­i­ly quite well, although they shared dif­fer­ent artis­tic con­cerns.4

Van der Poel began as a devot­ed painter of pro­sa­ic inte­ri­ors, farm­yard scenes, and coastal moon­lit land­scapes. His sub­ject mat­ter took a dra­mat­ic turn later in his career to scenes of dis­as­ter, espe­cial­ly those with burn­ing build­ings.5

He repeat­ed­ly paint­ed images of the famous gun­pow­der mag­a­zine explo­sion (the great Delft don­der­slag, or ​“thun­der­clap”) that took place on Octo­ber 12, 1654, killing numer­ous inhab­i­tants and destroy­ing a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the city.6

The most famous vic­tim was Van der Poel’s neigh­bor and col­league, Carel Fab­ri­tius (1622 – 1654). Far more sig­nif­i­cant­ly for Van der Poel, the explo­sion appears to have claimed the life of one of his daugh­ters, direct­ly after which the artist and his fam­i­ly moved to Rot­ter­dam.7

Schol­ars nat­u­ral­ly spec­u­late about the degree to which we can impute trau­ma as a rea­son that he repeat­ed­ly returned to paint­ing that dis­as­ter, along with a host of other fire scenes both real and imag­i­nary. What­ev­er the case, Van der Poel’s bran­t­jes (lit­tle fire scenes), as they were called in con­tem­po­rary inven­to­ries, proved pop­u­lar enough that in 1698 the Rot­ter­dam chron­i­cler Ger­ard van Spaan called him ​“the best painter of fire in the Nether­lands.” 8

This draw­ing com­bines Van der Poel’s early inter­est in rural work­ing-class genre scenes with his later focus on the illu­mi­na­tion effects of fire and arti­fi­cial light in a night­time set­ting. Among Van der Poel’s few draw­ings, this remains his only known inte­ri­or scene, a set­ting more often found in his paint­ings. Anoth­er draw­ing for­mer­ly on the art mar­ket that shows two men with torch­es lead­ing a heav­i­ly laden don­key was pos­si­bly made around the same time since it has sim­i­lar dimen­sions and the same early prove­nance.9

The motif of a woman breast­feed­ing can be found in a paint­ing of an inte­ri­or scene by Van der Poel dated 1657.10

In the late 1650s, images of breast­feed­ing women appear to have become pop­u­lar among other artists, such as Van der Poel’s for­mer Delft col­league, Pieter de Hooch (1629 – 1684).11

Van der Poel’s draw­ing might plau­si­bly date to around the same peri­od, and there­fore short­ly after his move to Rot­ter­dam, where he pro­duced many of his other night­time scenes. It was also around this time, as Wayne Fran­its point­ed out, that Dutch physi­cians began pro­mot­ing mater­nal breast­feed­ing as a vital and health-giv­ing activ­i­ty, prefer­able to using live­stock milk or employ­ing a wet nurse, not only to pro­vide the best pos­si­ble nour­ish­ment to the chil­dren, but also to impart (so it was believed) some of the moth­er’s per­son­al­i­ty traits to them.12