1220 - Willem van Odekercken

Willem van Odekercken Girl and Boy with a Rommelpot Oil on panel (parquetted). 66 x 52 cm. Provenance Private collection, Switzerland. A chubby-cheeked girl and a boy gaze out at the viewer with childlike insouciance. The boy is beaming from ear to ear, clearly delighted by the din he can make with the rommelpot in his hand. Carrying the rommelpot, a pot covered with an animal bladder through which a stick had been inserted, children went from house to house, above all at Shrovetide, singing and making noise to ask for small gifts. It is this immediacy and exuberance that characterise Willem van Odekercken's genre scenes. After training in The Hague, Willem van Odekercken (also Odekercke or Odekerken) worked in Delft from 1643, where he was one of the city's foremost decorative painters until his death in 1677. His easel paintings, which rarely appear on the art market, include not only genre scenes and church interiors but above all kitchen pieces such as the Kettle Scourer in the Rijksmuseum (fig. 1), whose maid might almost be the older sister of our girl. For comparative illustrations, see the printed catalogue as well as the PDF version.