Jacob van Oost Bruges 1601-1671

A. Michiels, Histoire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise depuis ses débuts jusqu'en 1864, Paris 1845-76, vol. VIII, p. 433;
J.D. de Meyer, Les Van Oost, Peintres Brugeois du XVIIe Siècle, Ghent 1903, p. 36;
R.-A. d'Hulst, `Caravaggeske invloeden in het oeuvre van Jacob van Ost de Oude, schilder te Brugge', in Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis, XIII, 1951, pp. 174-5;
A. von Schneider, Caravaggio und die Niederländer, Amsterdam 1963, p. 113;
D. Bodart, Les peintres des Pays-Bas meridionaux et de la principauté de Liège à Rome du XVIIe Siècle, Brussels and Rome 1970, vol. I, pp. 76-77;
B. Nicholson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford 1979, p. 76;
J.L. Muellenmeester, Jacob van Oost de Oudere en het zeventiende-eeuwse Brugge, Bruges 1984, pp. 248-9, 260-61, no. A4;
B. Nicholson, ed. L. Vertova, Caravaggism in Europe, Milan 1990, vol. I, p. 152.

Engraved:
By P. de Vlamynck 1634.

This painting originally formed a pair to a canvas depicting Figures playing cards and drinking which is now lost. Both paintings are known through engravings by P. de Vlamynck, one of which (that for this painting) bears the legend `J.van Oost f.1634' (see D'Hulst, Literature, 1951, figs. 1 and 2). The pair were still together at the time of the Van Huerne sale in 1844 and probably afterwards, although their subsequent history is not known. An old copy of this composition is recorded by Nicolson (op. cit., 1990, vol. II, p. 152, reproduced vol. III plate 1421) in the F.A. Tofte Collection in Flushing, New York, where it was ascribed to Caravaggio. This composition clearly reveals van Oost's first hand knowledge of not only the works of Caravaggio but also the genre scenes of his principal Italian follower Bartolomeo Manfredi, which he would have seen at first hand during his stay in Rome during the 1620s. It is one of the most important of a small group of works painted in this vein by Van Oost during the following decade, including the Boys blowing bubbles in the Art Museum, Seattle, and culminating in the Calling of Saint Matthew of 1640 in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Bruges (ibid, vol. III, reproduced figs. 1415 and 1420).