Lot 170
  • 170

Attributed to Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp

bidding is closed

Description

  • Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp
  • portrait of a young boy and a young girl with a goat and two sheep in an italianate landscape, a herdsman with his cattle by ruins beyond
  • inscribed lower left: AEtatis 9
  • oil on canvas

Provenance

Malfait de Lille;
His sale, Paris, Pillet, 19 December 1864, lot (as Aelbert Cuyp);
Aguiot sale, Paris, Pillet, 1 March 1875, lots 3 and 4 (as Aelbert Cuyp);
Private Collection, Ireland;
With P. and D. Colnaghi, London;
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue raisonnĂ©....., vol. II, London 1909, pp. 43, 51, cat. nos. 132 (Boy) and 152 (Girl);
A. Chong, Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp 1594-1652, exhibition catalogue, Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, 2002, p. 186, under no. B2 (under uncertain attributions).

Condition

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The canvas is lined and the paint is stable and flat, with a restored vertical seam. There is a significant restored loss to the sky above the ruins and more minor restored paint loss to the upper right in the trees. The girl's face and dress have been augmented and pentimenti behind the rams head and through the sheep has been reduced. The boy's beret has been strengthened but both he and the goat are in a good condition. Overall, the painting is well preserved with the paint texture and impasto intact and little surface abrasion. Removing the varnish would improve the tonality. Offered in a dark wood frame, in good condition."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Catalogue Note

This large pastoral portrait was divided into two sometime before 1864, forming the pair of canvases described by Hofstede de Groot (see Literature). Hofstede de Groot also noted that the canvas with the boy was signed in full, and that the companion of the girl was inscribed Aetatis VII lower left. Both signature and inscription have since disappeared, but in the course of the restoration that reunited the two pictures the inscription giving the boy's age has come to light. The boy's costume is idealised and typical of the fashionable pastoral idiom in which the portrait was painted. The girl's dress, however, can be more accurately dated to around 1645-55. At this date Aelbert Cuyp shared a studio with his father Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp, who died in 1651-2. The ruins in the background of the present painting are those of the castle of Egmond.

This lot is accompanied by a copy of a letter from Stephen Reiss, the author of the 1975 monograph on Cuyp, dated April 1992, in which he stated that the present work was, in his opinion, a work by Aelbert Cuyp himself. More recently, however, Alan Chong has suggested that although the surviving inscription corresponds to Aelbert's handwriting, the painting is, in his view, the work of an as yet unidentified follower of Cuyp. He considers other works by the same hand to be a Portrait of two girls and a boy with a sheep  formerly in the Reiss collection, Aldeburgh; the Three children with a view of Rhenen sold in these Rooms, 3 July 1985, lot 52; and a Child with a goat now in the Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach.