The classroom - Egbert van Heemskerck (1634 - 1704)

Egbert van Heemskerck (Haarlem, 1634/35 – London, 1704) was a Dutch painter of genre scenes, above all humorous scenes of popular life, mostly peasants in taverns, often in comic or sometimes even coarse situations. He is also known for his depictions of Quaker meetings and of classrooms. He is said to have been a pupil of Pieter de Grebber.
He is clearly indebted to Adriaen Brouwer, Jan Miense Molenaer, Adriaen and Isaac van Ostade and Jan Steen. The tradition of peasant scenes had begun in Flanders with Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Common folk enjoying themselves in shabby, simply furnished taverns became a popular subject in Haarlem, where a large part of the population was of Flemish, Protestant origin.
He was the son of the physician Jasper Jaspersz. van Heemskerck and Marytge Jansdr. van Stralen. After his father’s death his mother remarried, in 1651, the art dealer and innkeeper Jan Wijnants, father of the landscape painter of the same name, so that Egbert and Jan Wijnants were stepbrothers. In 1646 he is registered with the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, although he may only have become a member in 1664. In the 1670s he moved to London.
His son Egbert van Heemskerck II (c. 1676 – 1744) was also a genre painter, and their work is sometimes confused. Work by Egbert I hangs in, among others, the Rijksmuseum, the Louvre, the Bowes Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Quaker Meeting is part of the Royal Collection.

We see a classroom full of children, some a little more bent on mischief than others. On the right the master, wearing a red cap, sits at his high desk. On the left, in the light that falls in through the window, the pupils sit and stand on and around the benches. One pupil has come to hand in his sheet to the master and begs him not to receive a smack with the spoon. Two children seem to be fleeing out of the door, while others await their turn or work together on their assignments. The room is dark, in brown tones, with wooden beams, a small framed image on the wall and papers on the floor. At the back a window gives a small view out, with a church tower in the distance.
School scenes were a popular subject in Dutch genre painting. Around the same time, c. 1663-1665, Jan Steen painted his The Village School (National Gallery of Ireland), in which a boy is punished by his master while the other pupils look on. Although many people in the Netherlands could read, school was not compulsory and many received only a basic education. As in many school scenes, the disorder in the classroom may also carry a moralising message about upbringing and discipline.

The work is signed and dated “Hkerk / 1665”.

Oil on canvas
Signed and dated: “Hkerk /1665”
Dimensions: 49 x 46 cm, 60 x 65 cm (framed)