Cornelis van Poelenburgh Utrecht circa 1593 - 1676

Etienne-François, Duc de Choiseul (1719-1785);
His sale, Paris, Boileau, 10 April 1772;
Louis-François, Prince de Conti (1717-1776), Paris;
His (deceased) sale, Paris, Remy, 8 April - 6 June 1777, lot 19;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 16 March 1956, lot 16;
With P. and D. Colnaghi, London, 1957;
Stella Donner, by whom acquired from the above;
Thence by descent.

London, A. Brod Gallery, October - November 1956, no. 26;
London, Colnaghi, Old Masters, 1957, no. 27;
Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, Ideal and Classical Landscape, February-March 1960;
Southampton, City Museum and Art Gallery, on loan, 1965.

F. Basan, Recueil d'Estampes Gravées d'après les Tableaux du Cabinet de Monseigneur le Duc de Choiseul, Paris 1771, plate 34;

ENGRAVED
In reverse by B.A. Dunker.

This painting has the distinction of having belonged to two of the most famous French collectors of Dutch paintings of the 18th century. It would be no exaggeration to describe the collection of the Duc de Choiseul (1719-1785) as one of the greatest collections of Dutch art ever formed; it contained no less than eight Rembrandts, as well as Ruisdael's Coast at Egmond aan Zee and Gerard Ter Borch's Lady playing the theorbo, both now in the National Gallery, London. The Prince de Conti bought no less than seventy six paintings at the Choiseul sale in 1772, the majority like this Dutch or Flemish, but among them he also acquired masterpieces such Claude's Juno and Argus (Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland) and Louis le Nain's Forge now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Another  treatment of this subject by Poelenburgh is in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden (inv. no. 1239).