Master Paintings Part II

Delft School, late 17th century

Interior with a gentleman offering a lady a glass of wine

Lot Closed

January 28, 04:42 PM GMT

Estimate

30,000 - 40,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Delft School, late 17th century

Interior with a gentleman offering a lady a glass of wine

oil on canvas

canvas: 37¼ by 30 in.; 94.6 by 76.2 cm.

framed: 50 by 43 in.; 127 by 109.2 cm.

With Kunsthandel Steinmeyer, Lucerene, April 1826 (as Samuel van Hoogstraten);
Art market, Berlin, before 1930 (as an autograph replica of the National Gallery picture by Hendrik van der Burch, according to Hofstede de Groot);
Art market, The Hague, 1938;
Anonymous sale, Vaud, Château de Grandson, June-August 1955, lot 40.

W.R. Valentiner, ed., Klassiker der Kunst: Pieter de Hooch, Stuttgart 1930, p. 295, note to p. 244 (under Hendrick van der Burch, but possibly by Jan van Noordt);
Château de Grandson: maitres hollandais et flamands, exhibition catalogue, Neuchâtel 1955, no. 40, reproduced plate 9;
N. MacLaren, rev. ed. by C. Brown, National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School, 1600 - 1900, London 1991, vol. 1, p. 101, and note 12 (as a late[?] copy of the National Gallery picture, which is by an anonymous Delft School artist, 1660 - 1665).

The present lot relates to a painting in the National Gallery, London¹ which is now described as "Possibly Ludolf de Jongh." The National Gallery canvas had, in the last century, been given to Pieter de Hooch, Jacob Ochtervelt, Samuel van Hoogstraten, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Cornelis de Man, Jan van Noordt, Barent Fabritius, Eglon van der Neer, Johannes Vermeer, and Hendrick van der Burch.² Van der Burch was the attribution also given to the present lot by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, when he saw this picture on the Berlin art market in the early 20th century and believed it to be an autograph replica of the National Gallery painting. Wilhelm Valentiner thought the present lot related more to Jan van Noordt, but did attribute a group of similar paintings to Van der Burch. Peter Sutton's 1980 study on the artist rejected the paintings given by Valentiner to Van der Burch.

Christopher Brown in 1991 rejected all prior attributions for the National Gallery canvas, and catalogued it as Delft School, 1660 - 1665.⁵ Given the tentative nature of the present attribution, the artist of the present lot also remains anonymous. In any case, this artist was inspired by the interior scenes of the aforementioned genre painters, in particular the treatment of receding floor tiles, decorative wall coverings, and the experiments in perspective done by Fabritius and Vermeer. The subject matter is closely linked to that of Vermeer and late De Hooch with its suggestion of tension between romance and propriety.

1. inv. 2552. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/possibly-by-ludolf-de-jongh-an-interior-with-a-woman-refusing-a-glass-of-wine

2. See Brown 1991, p. 100.

3. See Valentiner 1930, pp. 294-95.

4. See P. Sutton, "Hendrick van der Burch," in Burlington Magazine 122 (1980): pp. 315-26.

5. See Brown 1991, pp. 99-101.