Modelled and fired. The bowl of the pipe has a rim and a boiler opening which accommodates the removable lid shaped like a helmet. A loop has been fitted to the back of the helmet permitting the lid to be secured to the truncated stem with a cord. Two air inlets have been made in the top of the helmet.

Flawless, apart from a small hairline crack at the top part of the helmet. Slight discolouration on the inside.

…; from Mr J.M.L.H. Clercx (1830-1894), Blerick, fl. 110, to the museum, 1887

Object number: BK-NM-8408

This unusual pipe bowl is shaped like a herm bust of Mars or some other bearded warrior from classical mythology. The boiler opening is concealed beneath the detachable upper part of the Roman helmet, which serves as a lid and can be secured with a cord, passing through the attachment ring to the truncated stem. The helmet contains holes at the front and back of the crest, serving as air inlets when the pipe is used for smoking. The peak of the helmet consists of a lion mask, above which Nikè, the winged goddess of victory has alighted. In her left hand she holds a torch, which could be an apt reference to the user’s action of lighting the tobacco.

Apart from the commonly known pipes made completely from clay, so-called cuff pipes took off in the eighteenth century.¹¹Information sourced from pijpenkabinet.nl. They have a short stem with a thickened cuff, into which a tube of wood, bamboo or bone has been inserted. Cuff pipes were less prone to breakage on account of these separate stems, allowing for a heavier boiler and thus increasing the sculptural properties. From then on, there was no need for the decoration to follow the form of the boiler. Accordingly, at the start of the nineteenth century, a fondness developed in France for cuff pipes with richly decorated, figurative boilers. They were often ‘facial pipes’ depicting the heads of particular types (Turks, for example), or (caricatures of) historical or literary personages. Well-known manufacturers included Gambier and Blanc-Garin in Givet, and Duméril and Fiolet in Saint-Omer, both small towns in Northern France.

Figurative pipe bowls are almost always made in series using multi-part moulds,²²Cf. D.H. Duco, De Nederlandse kleipijp, handboek voor dateren en determineren, Leiden 1987, fig. 52. but the present, very delicate specimen has, unusually, been modelled by hand and is also of exceptional artistic quality.³³Prototypes for pipes were generally carved in plaster; oral communication Don Duco, Amsterdam Pipe Museum. The maker, the well-known Dutch neoclassical sculptor, Matthijs (‘Mathieu’) Kessels (1784-1836), signed the bowl on the right side. Although the pipe has all the features appropriate for smoking use, it is more likely to have been made as an autonomous art work. Moreover, there are no discernible traces in the boiler to suggest the bowl had ever been used.

Kessels could well have derived inspiration for the object in France or from French examples. That is presumably the reason why Bergé dated the pipe bowl to 1816, with no further explanation,⁴⁴W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, no. K9. the year in which Kessels spent four months in Paris. However, it would have been very early for a work like this, since such figurative cuff pipes, with lids and constituting true sculptures, were, to the best of our knowledge, first made at the end of the 1820s.⁵⁵Oral communication by Don Duco, Amsterdam Pipe Museum. Although we cannot exclude the possibility that Kessels was breaking fresh ground, a later date should be factored in. The strict neoclassical style and choice of classical subject tie in well with his work from the end of the 1830s. As far as we know, Kessels only otherwise used the herm form for a bust portraying Bacchus and for a portrait of the naval hero, Maarten Tromp. Both works date from 1823-24.⁶⁶W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, nos. 6 (K43) and K46.

The museum purchased the pipe bowl in 1887 from the collection of J.M.L.H. Clercx, a member of the House of Representatives who was living in Blerick (near Venlo). In the context of the object’s provenance, it could be of importance that relatives of Kessels’s mother, Margaretha Caniëls, also lived in Blerick, and after Kessels’s father died in 1791, the family lived there for a time. Consequently, it is perfectly conceivable that the sculptor made the pipe for a family friend or a member of the family on his mother’s side, or that it ended up in that part of the country after his death, following the settlement of his estate.

Bieke van der Mark, 2026

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 439; W. Bergé, Heimwee naar de klassieken: De beelden van Mathieu Kessels en zijn tijdgenoten, 1815-1840, exh. cat. Den Bosch (Noordbrabants Museum) 1994-95, no. K9; J. Pouls, ‘Kessels, Europese kunstenaars uit ‘Limburg’ in de negentiende eeuw’, De Maasgouw 134 (2015) 3, pp. 110-21, esp. p. 118

B. van der Mark, 2026, 'Matthijs Kessels or , Pipe Bowl with the Bust of an Ancient Warrior (Mars?), Paris or Rome, c. 1815 - c. 1830', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200116116