Attributed to Augustinus Terwesten the Elder The Hague (?) 1649 - 1711 Berlin

Anonymous sale ('Sale held on the instructions of Ontvanger der Directe Belastingen, The Hague'), Amsterdam, Christie's, 7 September 1983, lot 380 (as attributed to Jacob de Wit).

Among his contemporaries Terwesten enjoyed a pre-eminent reputation as a painter of ceiling and wall pieces, but little of his work in this vein has survived today. In 1687, for example, he painted a ceiling in the Schepenkamer of the Leiden Stadhuis but this, along with commissions for the Soestdijk Palace, and others in Rotterdam, The Hague and Dordrecht, are all lost. In 1692 he became Court painter to Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg (later Frederick I, King of Prussia). Of his work at Stadtschloß in Berlin, Schloß Köpenick in Charlottenburg, and Schloß Oranienburg, however, only the last remains. His style was nevertheless faithfully followed and continued by his younger brother Matthäus Terwesten (1670-1757). Its nature may be determined by Augustin's surviving easel paintings, such as the signed Venus and Cupid now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, and for this and more complete survey of Mattheus's works as a decorative painter see CJ.A. Wansink, "De decoratieve schilderkunst van Mattheus Terwesten, een Haagse meester uit de achttiende eeuw", in Oud Holland, 104, 1990, Nr.3/4, pp. 270-292, fig. 3).