Collection Online
Travellers by a well
Medium
oil on wood panel
Measurements
23.7 × 34.0 cm
Accession Number
E3-1980
Department
International Painting
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by Dr Orde Poynton CMG, Fellow, 1980
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Gallery location
17th Century & Flemish Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work

After artistic training in their native Utrecht, Andries Both and his brother Jan travelled to Italy in the early 1630s. They established themselves in Rome painting bambocciate, a new genre being developed there by Dutch, French, Flemish and German artists. Bambocciate were small cabinet pictures of ‘low’ life in the Roman Campagna, painted with Northern realism and infused with recognisably Italian light. The amusing and rustic character of these simple vignettes was relished by Roman aristocratic and bourgeois collectors. This particular scene, showing travellers paused for refreshment, might well have been observed during the Both brothers’ journeys.

Subjects (general)
Daily Life Human Figures Travel
Subjects (specific)
children (people by age group) drinking men (male humans) travellers (people by activity) water wells women (female humans)
Provenance
Collection of Protheroe (?), until 1810; included in the sale of property of the 6th Earl of Coventry and others, Christie’s, London, 16-17 February 1810 (sold 17 February), no. 94 as Jan Both (style of); bought by Sale (?); collection of Verdi Killicoat Burmeister (1894–1956)[1], Unley, Adelaide, South Australia, by 1956; by whom bequeathed to the Art Gallery of South Australia, 1956[2]; subsequently sold, Theodore Bruce (auction house), Adelaide, 14 June 1957, lot no. undetermined[3]; bought from this sale by Dr John Orde Poynton (1906–2001); his collection, Melbourne, 1957–80; by whom donated, through The Art Foundation of Victoria, to the NGV, 1980.

[1] Burmeister is buried at West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide. He was the son of Charles Frederick Burmeister (1857–1941), a tenor, and Marion Maude Burmeister (1868–1932, nee Killicoat). His grandfather was Heinrich Wilhelm Burmeister (1818–1907), a German pioneer who arrived in the 1840s, not long after the Colony of South Australia was founded (1836). From the obituary, H.W. Burmeister made his fortune on the Victorian goldfields before returning to Adelaide to pursue a trade as a mason. He made regular trips to Europe in the late nineteenth century. After his death, his will was contested by his estranged children and his widow. The ensuing probate dispute (June – July 1908) was covered extensively by local newspapers.


[2] Objects from the bequest were deemed unsuitable for the Art Gallery of South Australia (then known as National Gallery of South Australia) and, with the agreement of the family (possibly sister Daisy Maud Salotti, nee Burmeister, d. 1970), were sold at auction. Some pictures were retained including a Flemish wood panel painting; a portrait of Louis XIV, and Quayside, by Frances Hodgkins. See Bulletin of the National Gallery of South Australia, vol. 18, no. 4, 1957.


[3] Proceeds from the sale formed AGSA’s VK Burmeister Bequest Fund and used for acquisitions. The sale catalogue contains very few details and descriptions of lots. The Both painting could be Lot 1, Dutch Oil; Lot 7, Small oil on Wood, or; Lot 76, Dutch School.

Frame

The Andries Both was acquired in 1980, fitted into a decorative C19th classical revival outer frame with a profiled inner section. These two frame sections are not intended to fit together. The outer part covers more of the vertical edges than the horizontal edges of the gilded inner section.
The reverse of the panel carries a crayon inscription which describes a 2” swept frame for the former owner. This description most likely describes what may have been fitted to the gilded inner section of the current frame. The frame is best seen as a hybrid formed from two separate frames.

The proposal to re-frame this painting was initially put forward in 2005.
The frame is a reproduction of a Dutch, stepped, flat bottomed frame with a slip, dating to c.1633.
Though it appears wide for the dimensions of the panel, it references a number of original small scale seventeenth century Dutch paintings housed in large format frames.
The frame was made in London and fitted to the painting in August 2017.

Framemaker
Reproduction - commissioned by the NGV
Date
2017