Jan de Bray Haarlem circa 1627 - 1697

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, De Winter & Yver, 8 September 1773, lot 34 (apparently as Salomon de Bray), to J. van der Hoogt (according to Hofstede de Groot, cited by Von Moltke under Literature);
Possibly anonymous sale, Amsterdam, 1 October 1778, Ploos v. A... & Yver, lot 35 (as Salomon de Bray), to Delfos for 25 Guilders;
Johannes van Bergen van der Gryp, Malucca and Leiden;
His deceased sale, Soeterwoude, A. Delfos, 25 June 1784, lot 12 (as Jacob de Bray), unsold at 25 Guilders;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 29 November 1946, lot 137 (as G. van den Eeckhout), to Agnew's;
With Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., London, 1949, from whom acquired by John Vaughan-Morgan, later Lord Reigate;
Thence by family descent;
Sold, London, Sotheby's July 7 2005 lot 14.

Probably J.W. von Moltke, "Salomon de Bray", in Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, vols. 11-12, 1938-9, p. 382, no. 34 (recording the 1773 sale; as Salomon de Bray);
J.W. von Moltke, "Jan de Bray", in Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, vols. 11-12. 1938-9, p. 466, no. 14 (recording the Van Bergen van der Gryp sale; as Jan de Bray);
A. van Suchtelen, "De aanbidding der herders door J. de Bray", in Mauritshuis in Focus, vol. 10, 1997, pp. 14-16, also footnote 4;
J. Giltaij, in Dutch Classicism in seventeenth-century painting, exhibition catalogue, Rotterdam 1999, p. 303, under cat. no. 59, reproduced fig. 59b (as whereabouts unknown).

Jan de Bray was one of a large family of painters living and working in Haarlem; his father, Salomon, was a successful artist, as were two of Jan's brothers, Dirck and Joseph.  The family worked together very closely, studying each other's paintings, sharing advice, and maintaining an archive of the workshop's production (see J. Giltaij and F. Lammertse, 'Maintaining a Studio Archive: Drawn copies by the de Braij Family', in Master Drawings, vol. 39, no. 4, 2001, pp. 367-8).  A feature of this studio practice was that Jan and the other de Brays regularly made drawn copies of the paintings produced in the family workshop, drawings that served not only as archival records, but also as prospecti for future clients who might want to commission similar paintings.  Painted in 1658, this Adoration and the drawing made after it (the following lot in this sale) is an example of this practice.

Paintings by Salomon de Bray and his son Jan have often been confused in the literature.  The confusion often originates in descriptions in old sale catalogues: for example the present picture appears to be the one sold as Salomon de Bray in 1773, and can be identified with greater certainty as the one sold as by 'Jacob de Bray', dated 1658, in the Van Bergen van der Gryp sale in 1784.  Von Moltke therefore listed what was probably the same picture in his catalogue raisonnés of both artists.  To further muddle the situation, the present picture was sold at Christie's in 1946 with an attribution to Gerbrand van den Eeckhout.  A photograph at the R.K.D in The Hague records subsequent attributions: to Jan de Bray made by Horst Gerson; and to Salomon de Bray by Albert Blankert.  The question was only resolved with finality when the connection between the painting and Jan de Bray's signed drawing was published by Ariane van Suchtelen in 1997 (see following lot).