It is the year of the misfits in the National Gallery of Art’s premiere West Building exhibition space. I mean the term "misfit" in a precise sense: 2015 has been thus far devoted to painters who do not quite fit into preexisting categories.
First there was a show devoted to Piero di Cosimo, the brilliant madman of the High Renaissance, who foreshadowed the mannerism of the 16th century without ever establishing a consistent style for himself—and who, partly as a consequence, has never been as well remembered as his Florentine contemporary, Leonardo. Then came a show (still up and running) for Caillebotte, the forgotten Impressionist. Though better appreciated in his own day than during the 20th century, Caillebotte has also long been subject to questions of categorization: Was he a gritty urban realist in the style of Degas? Or a follower of Monet’s more sunlit, suburban trend? As with Piero, Caillebotte’s refusal to choose, not to say his somewhat derivative quality, has earned him a place among the B-listers in the history of art—so long as we hasten to stipulate that being placed on the B-list when compared with Leonardo, or with Degas, still suggests something remarkable.
Now there is a show devoted to the Dutch painter Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638). Unlike Piero and Caillebotte, Wtewael had a consistent style—but, in keeping with this year’s theme* for these spaces, his interpretation of Northern Mannerism seems to have lingered unfashionably late at the party. When Dutch painting began its decisive shift in the direction of realism and restraint in the first half of the 17th century (think of Vermeer, for example)—a style that in retrospect seems appropriately northern and Protestant—Wtewael continued to make pictures that seem to have more in common with Mediterranean Catholics of the Counterreformation.
Wtewael painted this way well into the 17th Century despite being a Calvinist, an active participant in the politics of Utrecht and the Dutch Reformed Church, and a wealthy burgher—like Caillebotte, Wtewael’s wealth did not derive from his painting. He owned a flax business. He was the model of a Dutch republican, even though he painted in a style that later critics—challenged usefully by the organizers of this exhibition—would consider to be decadent, all too Italian, too luxurious, and produced by men who were "scarcely any longer Dutchmen."
Considering the timing, perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that they were not yet Dutchmen, as Dutchmen would later understand themselves to be. Anyway, these complaints were an anachronistic imposition by a later critical era upon men who, in their day, surely did not consider themselves to be living contradictions. Wtewael certainly does not seem to betray any lack of confidence.
Wtewael’s biblical scenes, such as "Lot and His Daughters," are what the curators call "frankly erotic," which is a nicely polite formulation. Considering the moral logic of Wtewael’s day, one might anticipate that such a scene would be intended as a warning. Lot’s daughters, persuaded that their only option for reproduction following the destruction of Sodom (seen burning on the right) is to sleep with their own father, get the old man drunk and have their way with him. Wtewael’s version, which depicts events at just about the moment when Lot passes the point where he could legally consent to sex at college in California, does not exactly achieve the moralizing tone one might expect. Those grapes in the basket do look enticing, don’t they? As does that wheel of cheese, split open on the left. And as for those daughters…
The same "frank eroticism" is on display in "The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian," which (unconventionally, the curators point out) depicts the martyr not after he has been riddled with arrows but while he is still being tied up to the tree. He is looking blissfully at the cherub who’s come to cheer him on in his task. One gets the sense that the technical challenge of representing a sensuous male nude is of greater interest to Wtewael than questions of spiritual uplift.
Some of Wtewael’s finest work on display at the NGA is not on canvas or panel, but on copper. Wtewael used these hard and—compared with wood or cloth—extremely smooth surfaces to make tiny oil paintings that show stunning levels of detail. Some of the scenes so depicted can’t really be described by the "frankly erotic" euphemism anymore, and one expects that their owners benefitted from the fact that the small size of the copper paintings allowed for easy concealment. Others make a show of depicting vast, riotous, complicated feast scenes, but all on a scale of, say, 30 by 40 centimeters.
Feasts, food, and the prosperity they imply are consistent themes for Wtewael. In the painting I found to be the most intellectually engaging painting of the exhibit, "The Kitchen Maid," Wtewael depicts a young woman in the process of preparing a roast. He made this painting toward the end of his career, and there are touches of the new, naturalist trend here—compositionally, and in its treatment of a strong, white light from the left, you could almost say that the painting foreshadows Vermeer. But for the most part it is characteristic of Wtewael’s other work, including in its moral ambivalence and complexity.
The still-life of the feast-in-waiting on the left—butter, a huge piece of meat rippling with snowy fat, fish split open and displaying their innards, realistic fowl-feet dangling in the air—is sufficiently detailed as to be slightly repulsive. The girl seems happy enough as she skewers, and even somewhat pretty: but look at those enormous arms, and her raw knuckles, bloodied by the food. The depiction of her flesh is uncomfortably similar to that of the meats she is preparing. And what’s that, back in the deep space on the right?
It is Jesus visiting Mary and Martha, the curators point out. In Luke’s gospel, Martha gets chided for preparing a meal while her sister Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens.
So what is this painting—a harrowing commentary on the spiritual dangers of bourgeois luxury? Perhaps. But don’t miss the fact that there is a hint of a smile on the kitchen maid’s face. Wtewael’s raucous art stands in such apparent contrast to his life and Calvinist milieu that this ironic little grin shouldn’t surprise us.
* Part of this exhibition space has also been devoted this year to works from the now defunct Corcoran Gallery of Art, which doesn’t quite fit my theory. Though you could say that, as a consequence of its own mismanagement, the Corcoran became a misfit of a museum.