Jan Weenix

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 17 April 2002, lot 51.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This picture is in presentable condition. The canvas has a good glue lining, and the paint layer is stable. This is a fairly large canvas with a muscular texture, and although there are fine details in the monkey, the child and the still life, a lot of the background is very broad. Under ultraviolet light, one can see that the face of the child is mostly unrestored. There are spots of restoration in the stone shelf across the bottom of the picture, in the stone plinth and around the statue on the left side. There appears to be an original canvas join running vertically down the left side, about four or five inches from the left edge. The trees are very sketchy, but not badly presented. There is a diagonal break in the trees that begins in the upper center and runs into the neck of the central stone statue. There is another "L" shaped break between the hands of the monkey that continues horizontally into the base of the central standing statue. There is thinness in the sky and a suggestion that this picture may have had a curved top to its frame at some point, but the canvas does not appear to have been shaped. The restoration could certainly be re-examined; this would be beneficial to the picture, but the picture could also be hung as is.
"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."

When last sold (see Provenance), Fred Meijer of the RKD supported the attribution of the present work to Weenix, based on a transparency. He suggested a dating of after 1700, noting that the inclusion of such a prominently placed figure in the direct foreground of the picture is quite rare. Weenix includes a group of similarly rendered children in the immediate foreground in another composition at the Carlyle Hotel, New York, which is of larger dimensions, but from a seemingly similar moment in the artist's career (fig. 1). 

The wide scale, and inclusion of decorative accessories, classical statuary, and manicured Italianate gardens, reflect the growing influence of French taste in Dutch art at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. The stone ledge in the foreground of the composition would probably have been set at waist level or slightly higher, thus providing an illusionistic perspective for the viewer or patron. Weenix, who was unquestionably the dominant and most celebrated Dutch exponent of this genre, seems to have found a ready demand for works on a large scale. Though the present work is in fact smaller than his largest format pictures, some of his greatest achievements were the twelve enormous canvases executed for his patron Johann Wilhelm van der Pfalz, the Elector Palatine, between 1710 and 1714 for his castle at Bensberg.