The Kitchen Maid in European painting: 17th – 18th century

Introduction

When I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, I saw Chardin’s “The Kitchen Maid”. This painting became the trigger for this post. I have written in the past about Chardin’s food and kitchen paintings.

Today’s theme belongs to “genre painting”, which depicted scenes from everyday life, both high and low. The artist Samuel von Hoogstraten in his “Introduction to the elevated school of painting” (1678) defines three “grades” of painting: still ife painting at the lowest level, history painting at the highest, and genre painting occupying the middle ground. The term “genre” painting itself was not used until the end of the 18th century by the French writer Quatremere de Quincy (Genre Painting in Northern Europe, Jennifer Meagher Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

The period covered in the post ends at the beginning of the industrial revolution which changed the real and painted world.

The Kitchen Maid in the Household

The kitchen maid was a domestic servant at the bottom of the social structure. As an example of social pre-industrial structure, in the 17th century the English society had four layers, descending from nobility and upper gentry down through the professional and merchant classes, the yeomanry and finally to the common people (labourers, husbandmen, artificers and servants) (quoted in Jane Holmes, Domestic Service in Yprkshire, 1650 – 1780. Ph. D. Thesis, University of York, 1989.).

In the hierarchy of domestic servants, the kitchen maid was an under cook. In the countryhousereader I found the following descriptions of the relevant jobs in England.

Kitchen maid/Cook maid. Often very skilled women or with the ambition to be so, they were part of the team of females overseeing everything in the kitchen department from cleanliness and efficiency to food preparation as well as answering to the demands of the dining table on a daily basis. (Wage: 18thcentury – £4; 19th century – £14; 20th century – £25)

Dairy maid. The 18th century image of a buxom maiden flirting with stable boys or the tenant farmer’s son added to the romance of the dairy maid and her rural freedoms. In reality she stood to support the network of employees connected with country house self-sufficiency. A woman in this job knew how to churn butter, to recognise the perfect creams for eating and how best to use the milky by-products for a variety of ingredients in the kitchen. This role became less crucial to the country house structure by the 20th century due to the impact of large-scale dairy farming and the ease at which produce could be bought from the open market. (Wage: 18th century – £5; 19th century £12; 20th century – £15)

Scullery maid. A country house maid-of-all-work whose routine revolved around supporting the kitchen maids with fetching and carrying, scrubbing, washing and scouring pots, pans and the kitchen generally! Her duties consisted of whatever the other staff (mainly the kitchen maids) thought fit within that department. (Wage: 18th century – £2 10s; 19th century £6; 20th century – £12)

Painting the Kitchen Maid – Themes

The post is structured along four themes:

Scenes with religious backgrounds
The kitchen scene
The beautiful maid
The solitary figure

The use of a religious story in the background of a kitchen scene gos back to the 16th century.

Starting with a picture painted by Joachim Bueckelaer in the middle of the 16th century, I continue with an engraving by Jacob Matham which clearly features the kitchen maid / kitchen scene theme with a biblical scene in the background. The theme concludes with the three paintings by Velazquez that have a kitchen scene with a kitchen maid as their subject.

In the second section I present a kitchen scene painted by a Dutch painter and in the third two paintings that focus on the aesthetic, sensual, and sexual aspects of the subject.

Finally, in the fourth section I present the maid painted as a solitary figure.

Scenes with religious backgrounds

“God is to be found amid pots.”

St. Teresa of Avila

(Read more: http://globalnation.inquirer.net/1301/the-god-of-small-things#ixzz4zYJ6yMUL
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Most common scenes from the New Testament is Jesus’ visit to the house of Martha and Mary, and the Supper at Emmaus.

Martha and Mary were the sisters of Lazarus, who was resurrected by Jesus. One day Jesus visits the house of the two sisters. Martha gets on with the preparation of a meal for the visitor, while Mary listens to Jesus talking and does nothing. At some point Martha complains to Jesus that she has no help, and asks him to tell Mary to give her a hand. Jesus vindicates Mary in his response.

Martha is seen as the representative of “vita activa”, whereas Mary represents “vita contemplativa”.

Jesus’ visit highlights the conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics believe that salvation is the result of good works, whereas Protestants view it as a matter of faith.

In any case, Martha is the “kitchen maid”, and the kitchen maid is “Martha”.

Joachim Bueckelaer 1569

Kitchen scene, with Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary in the background

Joachim Bueckelaer – Kitchen Piece, with Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary in the background

oil on canvas, 110 × 140.5 cm (43.3 × 55.3 in)

Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam, Holland

Jacob Matham, 1603

Jacob Matham (Netherlandish, Haarlem 1571–1631 Haarlem)

Kitchen Scene with Kitchen Maid Preparing Fish, Christ at Emmaus in the Background, from Kitchen and Market Scenes with Biblical Scenes in the Background, 1603.

Engraving, sheet: 9 1/2 x 12 5/8 in. (24.2 x 32 cm)

Metropolitan Museum of New York.

Velazquez, 1618

Diego Velazquez,

Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

oil on canvas, 60 × 103.5 cm (23.6 × 40.7 in)

National Gallery of Art, London, England

The young maid in the foreground is obviously upset, almost crying, while she toils to prepare aioli to serve with the fish. The older woman next to her seems to be pointing to the picture in the background, where Jesus is preaching to both sisters.

Velazquez, 1617/18

Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus by Diego Velázquez

Oil on canvas, 55 x 118 cm

National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

“This painting is widely considered to be Velázquez’s earliest known work. The artist painted Christ appearing to his disciples at Emmaus in the left background. In the foreground he depicted a Moorish servant working in the kitchen. The inversion of the religious and the worldly subjects was inspired by Flemish painters, including Pieter Aertsen.”

There is an additional element in this picture compared to the previous one. The maid may be a slave. Some analysts claim that by including a Moorish maid whi apprently is a slave in this picture, Velazquez wanted to make a statement against slavery.

Velazquez, 1618/20

Diego Velazquez

La Cucinera, La mulata, The Kitchen Maid

Oil on canvas, 21 7/8 x 41 1/8 in. (55.9 x 104.2 cm)

Art Institute of Chicago

Unlike its sister painting in Dublin, this one does not have the Emmaus Supper scene in the background. Velazquez erased the biblical scene in a move to “disengage” the topic from the biblical story and emphasize its contemporariness.

The kitchen scene

“Young men from the farm flirting with maids in kitchens or in the marketplace is a theme that descends from Pieter Aertsen (1507/8-1575) and his Antwerp pupil Joachim Beuckelaer to a fair number of Dutch and Flemish painters. The earlier works in this tradition convey religious and ethical ideas while entertaining the viewer with scenes of human comedy and abundant displays of naturalistic representation. Dutch authors such as Erasmus (1466?–1536) and Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert (1522–1590) compared food and sex as sensual pleasures and also condemned professions such as cookery, butchery, and fishmongering as serving the baser appetites.” (Kitchen Scene)

Peter Wtewael, 1620s

Working Title/Artist: Kitchen Scene Working Date: 1620s
photography by mma, Digital File DP146469.tif
retouched by film and media (jnc) 10_11_12

Peter Wtewael, Kitchen Scene, oil on canvas, 44 3/4 x 63 in. (113.7 x 160 cm)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA

Peter was the son of Joachim Wtewael. The painting was originally attributed to Jan Steen, and then to Joachim Wtewael.

‘In The Met’s picture, the kitchen maid’s skewering of a chicken, the young man’s offer of a bird (a duck, in this case), and his handling of an open jug with an extended middle finger are clear allusions to sexual intercourse. “Hunting the hare” was a euphemism for lovemaking, but here the dead hares probably stand for fertility, as does the basket of eggs (which were also considered an aphrodisiac). The various meats (vlees, or flesh) refer to carnal desire, and draw a parallel between gluttony and lust. The hanging cock and almost any form that appears phallic (especially the pestle in a mortar) amplify the humor, and also demonstrate the artist’s powers of invention and description.’ (Kitchen Scene)

The beautiful maid

The kitchen maid has been presented in a multitude of sexual contexts. Given the conditions of her employment, a kitchen maid did not have a solid ground on which to protect herself from unwanted gestures of the male members of the family and the guests. In a miraculous way, the sweaty, smelly young woman was transfromed into a sex object as if she had come out of her luxurious toilet. Totally hypocritical, totally unacceptable, but these were the times.

Sir Nathaniel Bacon,c. 1620 – 1625

Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit c.1620-5 Sir Nathaniel Bacon 1585-1627

1510 x 2475 mm

Purchased with assistance from the Art Fund 1995 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T0699

Tate Gallery, London, England

“Bacon, according to a letter dated 19 June [1626], was growing melons at his estate in East Anglia, and he was known to have a keen interest in horticulture. The subject would most likely have had erotic connotations. The abundance of ripe melons surrounding the cookmaid echo her voluptuous cleavage.”

Boucher, 1735

François Boucher (1703-1770)

La Belle cuisinière (The Beautiful Kitchen Maid)

Before 1735
Oil on wood / H. 55,5 cm L. 43,2 cm

Musee Cognacq-Jay, Paris, France.

The solitary figure

The artiifciality of the maid as a sex object is relinquished in the paintings where the maid is painted as a solitayr figure.

Anonymous, between 1631 and 1677

Anonymous, The Kitchen Maid, 31cm by 24 cm

Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam, Holland

This maid is a real person, there is no cleavage, no flirting with anyone, she just carries on with her job.

Vermeer, c. 1660

Johannes Vermeer, The Milk Maid (or The Kitchen Maid) oil on canvas, h 45.5 cm × w 41 cm

Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam, Holland

“…his “milkmaid” exudes a very earthy appeal, with her pushed-up sleeves (revealing pale skin normally covered), her ample form (similar to that of women in slightly earlier works by Rubens), and her faint smile. The box on the floor is a foot warmer with a pot of coals inside; foot warmers frequently suggest feminine desire in Dutch genre paintings (because they would heat not only feet but everything under a woman’s long skirt). “

(Source: Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) and The Milkmaid, Walter Liedtke Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Chardin, 1738

Jean Siméon Chardin (French, 1699 – 1779 ), The Kitchen Maid, 1738,

oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection 1952.5.38,

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA

Chardin in this picture is the king of understatement. The picture is stripped to the bare minimum of elements needed to illustrate the subject. Not even a line is superfluous. The maid is staring at empty space. Time has stopped.

Chardin, 1738

Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699 – 1779 ), The Scullery Maid, c. 1738, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection; Frame: Gift of the Women’s Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art) 2014.79.708

Chardin, The Scullery Maid, oil on canvas, 47 × 38.1 cm (18 1/2 × 15 in.)

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA

The shiny pots tell us how well the mid is doing her job. She is looking away from the barrel, at something we cannot see. She is in the picture with her body, but outside the picture with her mind.

Chardin, 1739

CHARDIN, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon, Servant Returning from Market, 1739

Louvre, Paris, France

There is nothing like the abundance of the Dutch kitchen scenes in Chardin. Only the bread is clearly visible.

The maid has an enigmatic smile and looks away. As noticed in previous pictures, she is at the smae time inside the picture and out of it.

after Gerrit Dou, 1754

The Flemish kitchenmaid; a young girl seated in a kitchen and peeling carrots, surrounded by tubs and kitchen utensils, carrots and fish in foreground; after Gerrit Dou

Etching and engraving

British Museum, London

Henry Walton, 1776

Plucking the Turkey

Plucking the Turkey exhibited 1776 Henry Walton 1746-1813 Purchased 1912 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N02870

Tate Gallery, London, England

“This painting was exhibited in London in 1776, during the early stages of the war with revolutionary America. Walton’s image of a cookmaid plucking a turkey is an example of the kind of lowly subject-matter denigrated by Sir Joshua Reynolds and the new Royal Academy.

But it may also make a coded political reference. The turkey was very closely associated with America: Benjamin Franklin even proposed that it should become the symbol of independent America, instead of the eagle. The painting may, therefore, be a pro-British comment on the anticipated fate of the rebellious colonists.”

The Kitchen Maid in European painting: 17th – 18th century

Introduction

The Kitchen Maid in the Household

Painting the Kitchen Maid – Themes