Adam de Coster

Nomico family, 1949;
Acquired by the mother of the present owner in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

Advertisement in Connoisseur, March 1949, p. 50, reproduced;
B. Nicolson, "Notes on Adam de Coster", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 103, no. 698, May 1961, p. 186;
B. Nicolson, "Candlelight Pictures from the South Netherlands", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 108, no. 758, May 1966, pp. 252-256, fig. 45;
B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford 1979, p. 44;
B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, Turin 1989, vol. I, p. 101, reproduced vol. II, fig. 1595.

This unframed painting is less red than the catalogue illustration suggests. The canvas has quite an old relining which is still taut and effective. The paint surface is dirty but secure under a discoloured varnish. The canvas appears to the naked eye to be structurally sound though rather flat overall and sunken in certain passages, such as the blue tones of the man at centre with his back to the viewer. Inspection under UV light is not satisfactory due to the varnish. The painting would benefit from a clean.
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In the absence of signed and documented works by De Coster, all attributions have been based on Lucas Vorsterman's engraving after a lost original entitled The Trick-trak player.¹ The present painting, which was also engraved by Vorsterman, shares a number of similarities with this key, lost work.  Both compositions are multi-figural and lit by candlelight, with a figure in the foreground partially shading the light source. The artist adopts a low viewpoint in both paintings which means that the table-tops are hardly visible. Lastly, the same wide-brimmed hat is worn by the standing gentleman on the far left of the former's engraving (which would presumably have been the right of the actual painting) and by the man standing at the far right in the present painting.

A second version of this composition, previously attributed to Georges de la Tour and depicting just the left-hand figure group, is in the Musée Municipal, Guéret.²



1. See B. Nicolson, under Literature, 1966, p. 255, fig. 47.
2. See J. Thuillier, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Georges de la Tour, Paris 1973, reproduced plate D14.