Lot 30
  • 30

Paul de Vos, Jan Wildens

Estimate
300,000 - 500,000 USD
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Description

  • Paul de Vos
  • The Garden of Eden
  • branded on the stretcher with a crest from an as-yet unidentified Marquess (fig.1). 
  • oil on canvas
  • 65 3/4 x 92 1/8 inches

Provenance

Believed to have been bought from Sir Joseph Duveen by the family of the previous owner circa 1896;
By whom anonymously sold, London, Sotheby's, 3 July 1991, lot 82;
There purchased by the present owner. 

Condition

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 painting is quite dirty and has not been restored for many years. The original canvas is joined vertically though the center. The canvas has a good glue lining. While the original join is slightly raised, this is to be expected. When viewed under ultraviolet light, one can see that there is a quite fluorescent and opaque varnish covering the surface, on top of which are clearly fluorescent retouches. These are confined to the original canvas join, the edges, and a few random spots within the composition. If and when the picture is cleaned, it seems unlikely that any significant retouches would become apparent beneath the fluorescent varnish. The only area which has developed significant weakness is the magenta color of the saddle, bridles and ribbons of the horses in the upper left. This color seems to be the only area that has suffered unduly, and even the darkest, softest browns of the animals in the composition have survived beautifully. Although this painting could theoretically be hung in its current condition if the frame received slight restoration in the corners, cleaning would obviously make a difference, and the amount of retouching required as a result would certainly not be an issue.
"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."

Catalogue Note

Paul de Vos painted several pictures depicting the theme of the Garden of Eden, examples of which are located in the Musée du Louvre (inv. 1844) and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. 1709). The present canvas was mentioned as the autograph version when another example was offered at Christie’s Amsterdam, 6 May 2008, lot 179. It seems likely that de Vos worked on the majority of these at about the same time and then passed them on to his brother-in-law, Jan Wildens, for the completion of the landscape backgrounds. In style, they are all extremely close to de Vos' work for the Spanish court in the Torre de la Parada, dating from circa 1636 (see S. Alpers Corpus Rubenianum, The Decoration of the Torre De La Parada, 1971, pp. 119-21) and thus may date from the same period. Arnout Balis, who offered his opinions at the time of the 1991 sale (see Provenance), then pointed out that the lion which recurs in all the paintings in this group is inspired by Rubens’ rendering of the same animal in his 1624 The Meeting of Marie de' Medici and Henry IV at Lyons for the Medici cycle (Musée du Louvre), thus providing a terminus post quem for the present picture. Moreover, the extremely elegant white horse on the left of the present picture, with its long mane in the Spanish fashion, pink ribbons and elaborate saddle of a kind often found in Spanish equestrian portraits, is a direct quotation from the Equestrian portrait of Philip IV of circa 1630 in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. 762). Balis believes that work to be a collaborative venture by Cornelis de Vos (Philip IV) and Paul de Vos (the horse).

We are grateful to Fred Meijer of the RKD for endorsing the attribution to de Vos and Wildens, based on photographs.