Workshop of Marinus van Reymerswale, 'Two Tax-Gatherers', probably 1540s

Two Tax-Gatherers

Workshop of Marinus van Reymerswale

Not on display

About the work

Overview

Two strikingly ugly men in extraordinary clothing are seated at a table in a panelled interior. One writes in a ledger, the other – his features contorted into a sneer – grasps at a pile of coins. Documents, some of them legible, are piled on a cupboard behind the pair.

Marinus van Reymerswale and his workshop produced a number of versions of this very successful composition; many include manuscripts and legal documents that contain references to the town and inhabitants of Reymerswale, where Marinus probably spent much of his life.

All are satires of greed and corruption, and they might even have contained recognisable caricatures of officials from Reymerswale. Tax collectors were paid percentages of the revenues they collected, and had many incentives to extort every last mite from taxpayers. The two men, hideous in spite of their rich clothes, are vilified for their bureaucratic and legalistic greed.

In-depth

Marinus van Reymerswale and his workshop produced a number of versions of this very successful composition. Many include manuscripts and legal documents that contain references to the town and inhabitants of Reymerswale, where Marinus probably spent much of his life (the town disappeared beneath the waters of the Ooster Schelde in the seventeenth century). Here, the ledger in which the man is writing contains an account of the town’s income over seven months, while on the shelf above his head is a deed issued in 1515 by two Reymerswale aldermen, including one Cornelis Danielsz. Other documents reference the Voxen family, whose members held various offices in the town in the first half of the sixteenth century.

The clothing would have looked old-fashioned to contemporary viewers: the red (now faded to pink) heart-shaped hat looks like those worn by stylish women in the mid-fifteenth century, and both hats are ‘dagged’ – or cut in the style of the early fifteenth century. The man on the left is a municipal official; in another version his ring is ornamented with the coat of arms of Reymerswale. These men might even have been recognisable caricatures of real people, possibly members of the Voxen family or associates of Danielsz., himself known for corrupt practices. His brother-in-law, Dirck Jansz., had bribed his way into his position as Burgomaster in 1516, and was a colleague of one Adriaen Adriaensz. Voxen.

This painting is a careful copy of a picture now in the Louvre, Paris. Simplified versions of the composition exist at Antwerp and Warsaw. The Paris painting is clearly the original – its underdrawing was done freehand, whereas that in our painting was traced. Our picture is not by the same artist as the Paris one: the technique is very different and, in some respects, more sophisticated. The artist of the National Gallery painting was better at transitions of tone and hue in the draperies, but less successful at highlights: the teeth and fingernails have an unnatural gleam. It may have been done by someone working in Marinus’s workshop, though not trained by him.

The number of versions indicate just how successful a scene this was, with variants showing a Banker and his Wife and Two Misers. All are satires of greed and corruption. Tax collectors were paid percentages of the revenues they collected, and had many incentives to extort every last mite from the tax-payers. The two men, hideous in spite of their rich clothes, are vilified for their bureaucratic and legalistic greed.

The same objects and documents appear in different versions, which continued to be produced during the ten or fifteen years after Marinus’s disappearance in 1545. The artists seem to have had access to Marinus’s pattern drawings and other reference material. They would have found such things in his workshop, or perhaps with his successors if they had continued to run his business after his death. The simplified versions are difficult to date, and some have inscriptions in French rather than Dutch. Marinus’s heirs may have been supplying an international market, or perhaps one or two of them moved south into the French-speaking areas of the Low Countries. The texts in the ledgers also change from version to version, and were perhaps open to different interpretations, though all were meant as attacks on avarice.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Two Tax-Gatherers
Artist: Workshop of Marinus van Reymerswale
Artist dates: active 1533 - 1545
Date made: probably 1540s
Medium and support: oil on wood
Dimensions: 92 × 74.6 cm
Acquisition credit: Wynn Ellis Bequest, 1876
Inventory number: NG944
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Wynn Ellis
Frame: 17th-century Italian Frame

Provenance

Stated to have been ‘Formerly in the Van Ravenstein Collection’, the picture was owned by Wynn Ellis (1790–1875), who lent it to the Leeds exhibition of 1868. In the inventory of his pictures taken shortly before his death, this was no. 2 of the group housed at 76 Newman Street, London, and was described as ‘Quintin Matsys. The Money Changers’. Wynn Ellis bequeathed his collection to the National Gallery and NG 944 was one of the pictures accepted by the Trustees in 1876.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Lorne Campbell, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings: With French Paintings before 1600’, London 2014; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2008

Images of Erasmus

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

8 November 2008 - 8 February 2009
2022

Sin (National Touring Exhibition)

Perth Museum and Art Gallery

18 June 2022 - 25 September 2022

York Museums Trust

7 October 2022 - 22 January 2023

The Arc (Hampshire Cultural Trust)

24 February 2023 - 14 May 2023

The Auckland Project

17 June 2023 - 1 October 2023
2024

Money Talks: Art, Society & Power

The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

10 August 2024 - 5 January 2025

Bibliography

1879

F.W. Burton, 'La question Marinus', Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosité, 37, 1879
1912

L.H. Cust, 'Notes on Pictures in the Royal Collections, XXIII: "The Misers" at Windsor Castle', The Burlington Magazine, XX/107, 1912, pp. 252-8
1928

T.H. Fokker, 'Due pitture di "genere" fiamminghe nella Reggia di Napoli', Bollettino d'arte, XXII, 1928, pp. 122-33
1929

T.H. Fokker, 'Due pitture di "genere" fiamminghe nella Reggia di Napoli', Bollettino d'arte, XXIX, 1929, pp. 202-10
1939

L. Puyvelde, 'La renaissance flamande', Annuaire des Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, II, 1939, pp. 33-61
1945

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: Early Netherlandish School, London 1945
1949

H. van Werveke, 'Aantekening bij de zogenaamde belastingpachters en wisselaars van Marinus van Reymerswael', Gentsche Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschchiedenis, XII, 1949, pp. 43-58
1954

G. Marlier, Erasme et la peinture flamande de son temps, Damme 1954
1955

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: Early Netherlandish School, 2nd edn (revised), London 1955
1957

L. Puyvelde, 'Un portrait de marchand par Quentin Metsys et les percepteurs d'impôts par Marin van Reymerswale', Revue belge d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'art, XXVI, 1957, pp. 3-23
1963

Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique, Le siècle de Bruegel: La peinture en Belgique au XVIe siècle (exh. cat. Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique, 27 September - 24 November 1963), Brussels 1963
1967

M.J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, eds N. Veronée-Verhaegen and H. Pauwels, trans. H. Norden, 14 vols, Leiden 1967
1977

G.A.H. Vlam, 'The Calling of Saint Matthew in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting', Art Bulletin, LIX/4, 1977, pp. 561-70
1987

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Early Netherlandish School, 3rd edn, London 1987
1998

H. van der Velden, 'Defrocking St. Eloy: Petrus Christus's Vocational Portrait of a Goldsmith', Simiolus, XXVI/4, 1998, pp. 242-76
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2002

A. Mensger, Jan Gossaert: Die niederländische Kunst zu Beginn der Neuzeit, Berlin 2002
2002

D. Bomford et al., Underdrawings in Renaissance Paintings (exh. cat. The National Gallery, 30 October 2002 - 16 February 2003), London 2002
2003

P. Ackroyd et al., 'The "Two Tax-Gatherers" by Marinus van Reymerswale: Original and Replica', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, XXIV/1, 2003, pp. 50-63
2003

K.L. Belkin, 'Rubens and Early Netherlandish Art', Acta historiae artium, XLIV, 2003, pp. 265-72
2004

S.S. Dickey, Rembrandt: Portraits in Print, Amsterdam 2004
2008

P. van der Coelen, Images of Erasmus (exh. cat., Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam), Rotterdam 2008
2014

L. Campbell, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Netherlandish Paintings: With French Paintings before 1600, 2 vols, London 2014

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.