Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne

Princes Bariatinksky;
Chevalier F. Meazza, Milan;
His sale, Milan, Riblet, 17 April 1884, lot 90, reproduced pl. 15;
Prince Paul Troubetzkoy;
His sale, Paris, Chevallier, 3 May 1892, lot 44;
Count Grégoire Stroganoff, Rome;
Gray [or Grey] collection;
Mrs. Anton Vroeg;
By whom sold London, Sotheby's , 14 May 1958, lot 131, for £100, to Alfred Brod;
Alfred Brod, 1958.

London, Alfred Brod Gallery, Annual Autumn Exhibition of Old Masters, London 1958, no. 33, (as Pseudo van de Venne);
Providence 1964, no. 26;
New York, Finch 1966, no. 42;
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, temporary loan, 1972;
Washington, National Gallery of Art, Dutch Cabinet Galleries, temporary loan, 1 April – 15 September 1996;
New Orleans 1997, no. 57;
Baltimore 1999, no. 57.

D. Franken and F.G. Waller, L'Oeuvre de Adriaen van de Venne, unpublished and undated manuscript in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, ff. 210-211, cat. no. 86;
A. Muñoz in L. Pollak and A. Muñoz, Pièces de choix de la collection du Comte Grégoire Stroganoff à Rome, vol. 2, Rome 1911, p. 72, reproduced pl. LIII;
L.J. Bol, "Een Middelburgse Brueghel-groep. VIII. Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne, schilder en teyckenaer. B. Haagse periode 1625-1662," in Oud Holland 73 (1958), p. 131, note 10; 
Alfred Brod Gallery, Annual Autumn Exhibition of Old Masters, exhibition catalogue, London 1958, cat. no. 33, (as Pseudo van de Venne); 
D.G. Carter in Providence 1964, cat. no. 26, reproduced;
W. Wegner, Die niederländischen Handzeichnungen des 15.-18. Jahrhunderts. Kataloge der Staatlichen Graphischen Sammlung München,  vol. 1, Berlin 1973, p. 139;
L.K. Reinold, The Representation of the Beggar as Rogue in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art, doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley 1981, pp. 35-37, 162-163, reproduced fig. 6;
A. Plokker, Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne (1589-1662): de grisailles met spreukbanden, Leuven and Amersfoort 1984. pp. 66-69, no. 19, reproduced;
M. Royalton-Kisch, "Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne (1589-1662), de grisailles met spreukbanden. By Annelies Plokker" (book review), in The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), p. 153;
P.J.J. van Thiel, "A. Plokker, Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne (1589-1662), de grisailles met spreukbanden" (book review), in Oud Holland 100 (1986), p. 70; 
M. Royalton-Kisch, Adriaen van de Venne’s Album in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Londen 1988, p. 122, note 100 and p. 136, note 226;
F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, vol. 35, Roosendaal 1990, eds. C. Schuckman and D. de Hoop Scheffer, p. 21;
New Orleans 1997, pp. 145-148, cat. no. 57, reproduced;
Baltimore 1999, pp. 133-135, cat. no. 57, reproduced;
M. Westermann, "Fray en Leelijck. Adriaen van de Venne's Invention of the Ironic Grisaille", in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 50 (1999), pp. 250-251, reproduced fig. 31;
E. Buijsen, "De op- en neergang van het menselijk leven in een schilderijenreeks van Adriaen van de Venne," in Oud Holland 126 (2013), pp. 66, 73-74, 85-89, 113, cat. no. C.1, reproduced pp. 66 and 113.

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 work on panel has been cradled. The panel is flat and the paint layer is stable. The work seems to be slightly dirty. There seems to be a very light glaze of retouching in the sky to the left of the figures and a few other isolated spots in the right sky. The retouches are not specific and are discolored. The condition of the details in the figures seem to be undamaged and in beautiful condition. The work should be cleaned.
"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."

This is one of the finest grisaille paintings by Adriaen van de Venne.¹ Originally it formed part of a series of paintings consisting of five consecutive scenes, each accompanied by a saying: Armoe' soeckt list (Poverty leads to Cunning), List soeckt rijckdom (Cunning leads to Wealth), Rijckdom soeckt weelde (Wealth leads to Luxury), Weelde soeckt ellende (Luxury leads to Misery) and Ellend' soeckt de doot (Misery leads to Death). Each scene shows two main figures walking, dancing or stumbling through a sketchily rendered landscape. In Poverty leads to Cunning they are two old, blind musicians, the man playing a hurdy-gurdy and the woman a rommelpot.  The inscription is written on a curling banderole lying on the ground.

The designs for this complex series undoubtedly cost the artist a great deal of time and thought. In order to make the most efficient use of that investment he painted not one but several series of the scenes. Close comparison of the surviving illustrations of the different sayings makes it possible to reconstruct at least five versions of the series wholly or in part. The earliest one dates from 1630, so Van de Venne must have had the idea for the series in or shortly before that year. The next dated series is from 1632 but the other versions have no dates, so it is unclear how long production lasted. Although details of the different versions can vary, little change was made to the overall design or content. There are, though, variations in format, use of colour (grisaille or polychrome) and execution. This painting is the only surviving panel of a series in grisaille measuring circa. 38 by 30 cm, executed between 1630 and 1635 (see Buijsen 2013, C.1). A red chalk drawing in a private collection is probably a faithful  copy after a now lost painting with the inscription Rijckdom soeckt weelde (Wealth leads to Luxury) from the same series (Buijsen 2013, C.3).

The painting from the Weldon Collection has a loosely sketched underdrawing which shows some minor differences from the final painting. The most striking one is the head of the old man, which in the underdrawing is shown in profile (Buijsen 2013, fig. 11; infrared reflectography by Charlotte Hale, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

The series as a whole is an illustration of the ascent and decline of human life. Van de Venne, the painter-poet, had already toyed with the subject in a poetry anthology of 1623, and he was to return to it later at greater length in his wide-ranging book Tafereel van de Belacchende Werelt of 1635. He took the idea from the literary and pictorial tradition of the progress of human life, which had been depicted in the sixteenth century in several print series by Cornelisz Anthonisz and Jacob de Gheyn II, among others. Van de Venne based his suites of paintings on print series of that kind but gave them his own, highly personal twist. Even in the individual scenes he embroidered on the existing visual conventions, making inventive use of sixteenth and early seventeenth-century prints. For the composition of the painting under discussion he took his inspiration from an anonymous print after a design by Jheronimus Bosch from circa 1570 (see Buijsen 2013, figs. 20-21).

We are grateful to Edwin Buijsen (Mauritshuis/RKD) for confirming the attribution to Van de Venne and for preparing this entry.

1.  In the literature on Van de Venne, these monochrome oil paintings on panel are universally referred to as grisailles although in this case and the following two lots they are actually in shades of brown.