Lot 11
  • 11

Adriaen van Ostade Haarlem 1610-1685

bidding is closed

Description

  • Adriaen van Ostade
  • An Elderly Man Seated Holding a Wineglass
  • Signed and dated centre right: Av. Ostade/ 1663
  • oil on oak panel
    in a carved and gilt wood Parisian Neo-Classical frame stamped by the maker: E[tienne] L[ouis] INFROIT, and stamped by the frame-makers' jury: JME (Jurand de Mesuriers) 

Provenance

Antoine Poullain, (Receveur Général des Domaines du Roi), Paris, when engraved by Halbou;
His deceased sale, Paris,  Le Brun, 15-21 March 1780 (3rd day, 17th March), lot 47, for 445 Livres to Langlier;
Gustaf Adolf Sparre (1746-1794), by whom probably bought in Paris in 1780;
Sparre inv., 1794, no. 39

Exhibited

Stockholm, 1884, no. 149;
Kristianstad, 1977, no. 28. 

Literature

Granberg, 1885-6, no. 44;
M. van de Wiele, Les Frères Van Ostade, Paris 1893, p. 357, reproduced;
Göthe, 1895, pp. 22-3, no. 48;
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. III, London 1910, p. 185, no. 148 (`The Drinker');
Granberg, 1912, vol. II, p. 12, no. 23, reproduced plate 42;
I. Errera, Répertoire des peintures datées, Brussels-Paris 1920, p. 309;
Kjellberg, 1966, p. 346;
Hasselgren, 1974, pp. 117, 120, 127, reproduced p. 182;
C. Moiso-Diekamp, Das Pendant in der Holländischen Malerie des 17.Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt-am-Main 1987, p. 418, no. B8.

ENGRAVED
By Basan, from the Poullain Galerie, 1781;
By Louis Michel Halbou (1730-1809) when in the Poullain collection.

Condition

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a small unbevelled oak panel, which is entirely flat and without any cracks. There have been a few minute lost flakes in the past: two tiny flakes on the forehead and on the nose, a minute lost flake on the edge of the white collar, one touched out on the near shoulder and in the background by the far shoulder, another tiny flake lost in the hat, by the pitcher, in the bottom left corner on the chair, by the top right corner and near the top edge. However these are extremely small and there is no indication of present insecurity. The painting has been lightly cleaned and revarnished not long ago, and there is just an occasional minor older retouching: a few little touches on the forehead and on the lower cheek by the jaw line, over the tiny flake on the left shoulder and in the background near the right shoulder, with a little dab over one or two others near the top edge. There is slight scuffing at the edges. The fine detail is beautifully intact, for instance in still life of the pitcher on the left and the perfectly crisp writing on the leaflet tacked to the wall. The further side of the face has grown slightly more transparent with age, but the characteristic flickering touches suggesting movement and expression are quite well preserved, and the painting is in good condition overall. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Catalogue Note

This is one of a series of small-scale studies of single figures that Ostade painted in the 1660s and 1670s, relatively late in his long career.  He had painted studies of single figures throughout his life, but the earlier ones are more strongly caricatural, depicting raucous drunken peasant types.  While the element of caricature is always present, later pictures such as this one depict more prosperous types, often elderly lawyers or scholars, reading myopically, or as here, enjoying a a quiet drink and a smoke at the end of the day.  Ostade's pictures portray types of people and are probably rarely portraits.  the physiognomy of the present elderly fellow for example, with his high heavily lined forehead and bulbous nose can be found in other pictures as a man of varying age.

Although Hofstede de Groot remarked that the print on the wall behind is dated 1665, no trace of such a date, which would be anomalous, can be found.  A larger (28 by 22 cm.) copy of the Sparre picture with was in the possession of E. Heymann, Wassenaer, in 1943.

Sparre was in Paris in 1780, and according to Göthe, bought at least two other pictures from the Poullain sale, the celebrated Ter Borch now at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and a Jacob Jordaens Silenus.Since all of these were knocked down to Langlier, it is reasonable to assume that he was acting as agent for Sparre.  This is the only picture in Sparre's 1794 inventory to be identified by name - in fact by its signature and date.

We are grateful to Dr. Hiltraud Doll for her help in writing this entry.  Dr. Doll will include it in her catalogue raisonné of Adriaen van Ostade as no. 264.

1.  See Göthe under Literature, p. 6.