Pieter de Bloot Rotterdam circa 1601/2 - 1658

Captain Halkett of Brook Lawn, his sale, Palmer's, 3 March 1880;
Sir Thomas George Fermor-Hesketh, 7th Bt. (1849-1924)

F 1910, p.13, as ' A tavern with figures dancing, Terbugh', as hanging in the Saloon;
Rufford 1910, p.21, as hanging in the Morning Room;
AP 1927, p.8, item 12, £200, as hanging in the Smoking Room

Little is known about Pieter de Bloot.  He was the son of Flemish parents who settled in Rotterdam, but it is not known with whom he was apprenticed.  Rotterdam, having been a cultural backwater in the sixteenth century, enjoyed economic ascent in the seventeenth century when the Rotterdam art market rapidly evolved in size.  The city’s proximity to the Southern Netherlands and the influence of prominent Flemish painters such as Adriaen Brouwer and David Teniers the Younger were influential in raising Rotterdam’s artistic prominence.  Pieter de Bloot and Cornelis Saftleven, both in the circle of the ‘Dutch Teniers Group’, ensured that peasant themes remained popular during the second half of the century when high-life genre painting emerged.  The present painting is a particularly fine and characteristic work by this talented and versatile painter.