CONTINENTAL SCHOOL | HAGAR AND ISHMAEL

Private Collection, Brussels

Acquired from the above by the present owner

The present work depicts Hagar and her son Ishmael from the Book of Genesis. Hagar was the Egyptian slave of Sarah, the wife of Abraham. Because Sarah could not have children, she allowed Hagar to bear Abraham’s child, a son named Ishmael. When Ishmael was 13, Sarah had her own son, Isaac; as she did not want Isaac to share Abraham's inheritance with Hagar's son, she begged her husband to send Hagar and Ishamel away. Mother and son were banished to the desert, as depicted in the present work. Hagar’s expression is one of distress and anguish. 

While the attribution is currently unknown, the Academic, neoclassical style and the faces of the figures recall the work of Jacques-Louis David and his followers, particularly his Belgian pupil François-Joseph Navez, who painted this very subject in 1820, suggesting that the present work can be dated circa 1820-1830.