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Pomona and Vertumnus

(1647 Netherlands)

Colnaghi

Private collection for two generations, Normandy, France

M. Roethlisberger, Abraham Bloemaert and his sons: paintings and prints, Doornspijk 1993; A. Rollovà, Abraham Bloemaert and his son Hendrik: two unpublished drawings, Bulletin of the National Gallery, Prague, 1991.

Recently discovered, this unpublished painting is an important addition to the oeuvre of Hendrick Bloemaert. The painting, named after its central figure, shows Pomona, pensive and isolated, seated in a garden surrounded by fruit, while Vertumnus approaches in the guise of an old woman in the background. The mythological theme, taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses of Pomona and Vertumnus was particularly prevalent in Dutch painting in the seventeenth century. The myth is that of Pomona, a beautiful but haughty wood-nymph, who is usually portrayed holding a sickle (seen in the right lower corner of our picture) with a basket or selection of fruit. She sheltered herself inside her orchard and dedicated her life to its cultivation while spurning all suitors. Vertumnus, either a demigod of seasons, is taken with Pomona’s beauty however she ignores and rebuffs all of his advances. The mutable Vertumnus gains access to the orchard disguised as an old woman (seen in the background left of our picture) and subsequently manages to woo Pomona and marry her.

Vertumnus and Pomona is a theme treated several times by Abraham as well as by Hendrick which, in the past, has created some confusion over attribution, (see for example a version, painted circa 1630-32, now attributed to Hendrick in M. Roethlisberger, op. cit., vol. II, fig. H49). Unlike the veiled treatment of the theme as a genre scene, the Colnaghi classical work is a response to two earlier paintings of Vertumnus and Pomona (circa 1612-15, Private collectin and 1620, Private collection) by Abraham (see, M. Roethlisberger op. cit., vol. II, fig. 187 (plate IX) and 413 respectively). Rather than slavishly copying his father’s composition, in our painting Hendrick has changed and streamlined the portions of their bodies and composition while eliminating traces of Dutch Mannerism evident in Abraham’s work datable to the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The Colnaghi painting is a fine, serene picture executed with soft colouring. The forms are elongated, movement is reduced and the colour scheme restrained to a harmonious palette. There is another version of Pomona and Vertumnus, 1635 by Hendrick in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (see M. Roethlisberger op. cit., vol. II, fig. H60). Incidentally this painting is a mirror image of ours - in both paintings, Pomona is facing the viewer, her legs turned to the side and her face is singled out by means of the white bust and dark trees. As she rests, Pomona is depicted seemingly dreaming in the middle of a warm day at the moment just before Vertumnus arrives to visit her in the guise of an old woman with a crutch. However, the closest work in composition to our painting is a version, sold at Sothebys, London in 2002. The only strikingly distinct difference is the colour of her dress which is green in the Sothebys version but red in ours; there are also subtle differences such as the arrangement of fruit resting on her lap and a slight difference in her hair and the jewellery she wears. In all, Hendrick painted four versions of this theme.

It is interesting to note that there is a compositional drawing of Pomona, 1635, in the National Gallery, Prague attributed to Hendrick by Anna Rollovà executed around the same time as the above mentioned paintings of 1635 (Centraal Museum, Utrecht), 1638 (Sale. Sothebys, London, 2002) and our painting dated 1647. This preparatory drawing is, in particular, comparable to the painting of 1638 and our painting of 1647. Both comprise of the same composition and architecture in the background and the same sense of the geometry of form and a similar pose held by Pomona, the drawing is virtually identical to the 1638 version whereas there appears to be slight variations to our painting. Notably in our painting the arrangement of the fruit in her lap is different and Pomona wears no pearls around her neck, only in her hair. These small but significant differences, show how the artist refined the earlier composition when it came to executing the Colnaghi picture.

Hendrick, Abraham Bloemaert’s oldest son, was born in Utrecht in 1601/1602. He was trained by his father, a fact which determined his style and future career. Hendrick was in Rome in 1627 for about three months and entered the St. Luke’s guild in 1630/32. In 1631 he married Margareta van der Eem, daughter of the lawyer and painter Cornelis van der Eem in Utrecht. Hendrick is the best known and most accomplished painter of Abraham’s sons, however he is not as celebrated as his father. In fact there is no adequate survey of Hendrick’s work; arguably it is not only due to him falling into the shadow of his father but also because there exists sparse documentation on his life and a large proportion of his works are in the Netherlands, either unpublished or difficult to access in churches, religious houses and private collections. Hendrick was principally a portrait, genre and the history painter who initially followed in the footsteps of his father, Abraham. However, his later style and more accomplished technique leads away from a Caravaggesque style associated with Abraham, to a more classical approach practised in Utrecht, Haarlem and at Court in the mid to latter part of the seventeenth century.