Poultry Sellers

Artist Joachim Beuckelaer (Flemish, ca. 1533-1574)

Place of OriginFlanders

Date1564

DimensionsPainting (H x W): 43 1/8 × 55 in. (109.5 × 139.7 cm)
Frame (H x W x D): 54 1/4 × 66 1/4 × 1 7/8 in. (137.8 × 168.3 × 4.8 cm)

MediumOil on panel

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1978.57

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 22

Label TextThis Flemish painting provides a glimpse of peasant life in the 1500s. Joachim Beuckelaer convincingly described in paint the contrasting textures of stoneware jugs, wicker baskets, and the feathers of various fowl. He seemed to delight in ordinary detail: note, for example, the worn, discolored leather of the man’s shoe. Beuckelaer specialized in the new genre of the market scene, which was pioneered by his uncle, the artist Pieter Aertsen. There may be more depicted here than a customer buying poultry, however: bird sellers often symbolized lechers. The man holds up a pair of hens to the young lady, a gesture possibly meant as an erotic overture (“to bird” was a crude term for sex). This meaning may be emphasized by the placement of the woman’s right hand.Published References"Calendar," Burlington Magazine, vol. 121, no. 910, Jan. 1979, p. 68.

"News: New Acquisitions," Ohio Museums Quarterly, vol. 3, no.1, Spring 1979, p. 16.

"La Chronique des Arts," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, vol. 93, no. 1323, Apr.. 1979, repr. no. 175, p. 35.

"1978 Annual Report," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 21, no.1, 1979, p. 6, repr., p. 8.

Wallen, Burr, "Joachim Beuckelaer's Poultry Sellers," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 21, no. 2, 1979, pp. 33-39, repr.

Flemish Paintings in America, Antwerp, 1992, repr. p. 317.

Davis, Tom, "The High Art of the Low Countries," Wildlife Art News, vol. 12, no. 3, May/June 1993, repr. p. 75 (col.).

Comparative ReferencesSee also Joachim Beuckelaer: Het markt - en keukenstak in de Nederlanden 1550-1650, Gent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1986. (no direct reference to The Poultry Sellers but iconographic information pp. 87-89).