(Zwammerdam circa 1620–1668 Leiden)
A kitchen maid cleaning fish,
signed and dated on the table: Quierijn 1664,
oil on panel, 32 x 28 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, London, 10 December 1993, lot 276 (as Quiringh Gerritsz. van Brekelenkam;
a pair);
sale, Koller, Zurich, 15 September 1994, lot 16 (sold for CHF 25,520);
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 17 October 1995, lot 126 (as Quirin van Brekelenkam);
Private collection, Vienna

The present painting is listed in the RKD database under no. 0000009972 (as Quiringh van Brekelenkam).

The present painting may possibly be the pendant to Old man seated at a table, holding a stoneware jug and a pipe that is listed in the RKD database under no. 214376 (as Quiringh van Brekelenkam), which was last sold at Koller, Zürich, 18-21 September 2007, lot 3048 (sold for CHF 28,000), and is likely to be the same painting as appeared last as a pair at Christie’s, London (see provenance).

Quirijn van Brekelenkam was a Dutch Baroque genre painter, who is thought to have trained in Leiden, possibly under Gerrit Dou (1613–1675). In 1648, together with several other painters, he cofounded the Guild of Saint Luke in Leiden. Though related in subject matter to the Leiden Fijnschilders that centred around Dou, Brekelenkam distinguished himself by preferring a looser manner of handling, which has been compared to that of Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667), in part thanks to his reluctance of prettifying his scenes of ‘simple folk’.

The present painting belongs to a long tradition of images of female food sellers and maids at work which stretches back to the market and kitchen scenes painted by Pieter Aertsen and his pupil Joachim Beuckelaer in the mid-sixteenth century. More direct visual prototypes for Brekelenkam’s Maid cleaning fish can be found in Metsu’s A young woman cleaning fish, with a cat (circa 1656–58, private collection) and Dou’s Kitchen maid with fish and a boy with a hare in a window (1652, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe).