Jan Miense Molenaer Haarlem circa 1610 - 1668

Baron Fagel, Avegoor, Ellecom;
With J. Goudstikker, Amsterdam, 1924;
With Galerie Neuse, Bremen, by 1995,
where bought by the father of the present owner;
Offered, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 6 November 2001, lot 36.

Although his first paintings are already dated 1629, Molenaer only became a member of the Haarlem guild of St. Luke in 1634. This work dates from the artist's early years around 1630, and can be compared with a signed composition, with almost similar measurements, representing Children making music and a dancing dwarf, in the Rusche collection, Oelde. Hans-Joachim Raupp, dates the Rusche painting to the first half of the 1630s. The known works of this early period are distinguished by the varied lively colouring, and the large figures occupying most of the picture surface (see H.-J. Raupp, Genre, Niederländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhundert der SØR Rusche Sammlung, Münster 1996, p. 171).
In his later genre scenes, after he had moved to Amsterdam, Molenaer shows more characteristics of pictures by artists such as Adriaen van Ostade and Adriaen Brouwer with their small scale figures in brown tonal interior scenes.

Quacks on market squares with a large crowd watching were popular scenes in 17th Century painting, and are often interpreted as mocking scenes of foolish peasants who are tricked by richly dressed quacks. In this picture this is not only underlined by the peasant, who, concentrated on the scene before him, is being robbed from his duck, but also by the boy with the hoop smiling at the beholder to draw attention to the scene behind him. Similar devices were often used by Molenaer in his oeuvre. In the Rusche painting (op.cit.) the boy in front also involves the beholder in the painting, and in 1630 Molenaer painted A Dentist scene containing similar details, such as the richly dressed dentist opposite the patient wearing rags, and the duck being stolen from a woman, in the Herzog-Anton-Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig (inv. no. 668).