Matthijs Naiveu

Netherlands, b.1647, d.1726

Scene in a Tavern

  • 1700-1715
  • Oil on canvas
  • Bequeathed by Archibald Claude Douglas Spencer to the Canterbury Society of Arts, 1931; given to the Gallery, 1932.
  • 660 x 600 x 100mm
  • 69/257

Matthijs Naiveu, like his better-known teacher Gerrit Dou, trained initially as a glass painter. Naiveu studied under Dou in Leiden from 1667–69 and advanced his career after moving to Amsterdam in 1678. This disorderly tavern scene perhaps carries an autobiographical thread – Naiveu’s father had been a wine merchant and innkeeper.

(Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)

Exhibition History

earlier labels about this work
  • Matthijs Naiveu studied under the leading seventeenth century Dutch painter Gerrit Dou (painter of The Physician). Naiveu’s tavern scene presents a moral lesson: the child implores his mother and a man who may be his father to put their intoxication aside, and give him a better chance in life.

    This is one of many works presented to the Gallery by the Canterbury Society of Arts in 1932. It was bequeathed to the society by Scottish-born Major Archibald C. D. Spencer (1861–1929). Major Spencer retired from service with the Royal Irish Rifles in South Africa, Canada and Malta and settled at Mount Peel in South Canterbury.

    (Label date unknown)