His clothes ragged and disheveled, a boy sits alone with a bowl of porridge resting in his lap. His expression melancholy but intently focused on the audience, the boy is one of the few paintings known to be created by Dutch Baroque artist Pieter Duyfhuysen. The Seated Boy Eating Porridge, with its empty gray background, is most likely a study created for another painting, as this young model appears in several other instances of Duyfhuysen’s known works. This particular work fits in to the category of genre painting, or painting that represents scenes of everyday life and everyday people, a subject that seems to have been popular with the artist.
While very little is known about this petite work and its lone subject, equally little is known about the artist. The brother of a well-established notary, Pieter Duyfhuysen lived and worked in Rotterdam, possibly as a student of a still-life painter named Torentius. Only around twenty paintings can be linked to Duyfhuysen, and many of these were, until recently, attributed to other artists entirely. Though knowledge of Duyfhuysen and his works are limited, Seated Boy Eating Porridge is an emotional little painting, and its existence only adds to the great visual collection of 17th century Dutch art.
by Rachel Jones