- 131
Pieter Fransz. de Grebber Haarlem circa 1600 - 1652/4
Description
- Pieter Fransz. de Grebber
- Homage to Bacchus
- signed and dated on the rim of the overturned urn, P. DE GREBBER 1628
oil on canvas
Provenance
By whom sold, New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., February 12, 1970, lot 59, to Ira Spanierman for $2,000;
With Ira Spanierman, New York;
By whom sold, London, Sotheby's, December 8, 1971, lot 98, to the J. Paul Getty Museum, no. 71.PA.67.
Exhibited
Literature
F. F. Hofrichter, Haarlem: The Seventeenth Century, exhibition catalogue, Rutgers 1983, p. 93, cat. no. 64, illustrated p. 95;
P.C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America, Grand Rapids 1986, p. 139.
Catalogue Note
This picture, dated 1628, one of the artist's most prolific years, exemplifies de Grebber's classicist tendency and at the same time reveals the influence that the Haarlem academicians, such as Karel van Mander, Cornelis van Haarlem and de Grebber's teacher, Hendrik Goltzius, had on de Grebber's early style.
The present picture may be compared with three other pictures of 1628, The Acts of Mercy and Jacob with Rachel and Leah (both in the Frans Hals Museum, inv. nos. 115 and 102 respectively) and with The Wrath of Ahasuerus in the Nationalmuseum Stockholm (inv. no. NM 448), and to another, later picture of 1634, The Finding of Moses, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (inv.nr. 1372). In each, de Grebber sets his sculpturesque figures against a darker background to push the main action into the foreground of the composition, thus giving the work a classical, relief-like character. The artist intensified this character by organizing his figures in a series of geometries or planes. This organization is very apparent in Homage to Bacchus: the figures are arranged in a triangle, with Bacchus atop his throne at its pinnacle.