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TITLE:
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A Couple Playing Trick-Track
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CATEGORY:
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Paintings
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MATERIALS:
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Oil on panel
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MARKINGS:
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Indistinctly signed and dated lower right: JA [in ligature] Duck / 65
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SIZE:
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h: 13.2 x w: 11.5 in / h: 33.5 x w: 29.2 cm
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REGION:
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Dutch
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PRICE*:
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Contact Gallery for Price
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DESCRIPTION:
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Jacob Duck portrayed a couple seated at a table and playing ‘trick-track’, a seemingly innocent pastime. However, the elderly woman behind the table would immediately, by contemporary viewers, have been identified as a procuress. It seems evident that the play is not only a play of ‘trick-track’, but it seems to refer to paid love. More in general Duck is alluding to notions of vanity and idleness as he does so often in his genre scenes. Elements such as wine, playing and smoking were commonly considered as part of a sinful life. Especially as smoking might be understood as an allusion to one specific aspect of vanity, the brevity of man’s life. Nevertheless, the scene can also be viewed as a simple scene representing three people enjoying a party of ‘trick-track’ and sipping at a glass of wine.
Little is known about the life of the Utrecht born artist Jacob Duck. He was long confused with the artist Jan le Ducq. Duck was probably born and trained in Utrecht, where he was listed as an apprentice portrait painter in the Utrecht Guild of St. Luke in 1621. His teacher was probably Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot. By 1630-32 he was listed as an independent master in the Guild’s records. Between 1631 and 1649 Duck is documented in Utrecht, Haarlem and Wijk bij Duurstede. By 1656, he is recorded as living in The Hague. He was buried at the St Mary Magdalena monastery in Utrecht.
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PROVENANCE:
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Achillito Chiesa, Milan
Sale, New York (American Art Gallery), 27 November 1925, no. 10, there acquired by Lionel Perry and thence by descent
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LITERATURE:
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N. Salomon, Jacob Duck and the Gentrification of Dutch Genre Painting, Doornspijk 1998, no. 16, p. 145, ill. pl. 102
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