PETER WTEWAEL | A GOATHERD WITH A BAGPIPE AND HIS MASTIFF, IN A LANDSCAPE WITH GOATS BEYOND

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 25 May 1988, lot 35 (as attributed to Peter Uytewael);

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 11 December 1996, lot 112 (as attributed to Pieter Wtewael);

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's South Kensington, 6 July 2005, lot 2 (as attributed to Pieter Wtewael).

The eldest son of the Utrecht Mannerist painter Joachim Wtewael, Peter worked only briefly as an artist, between 1624 and 1630. Joachim von Sandrart's record of his visit to the family in 1626 probably gives the reason for the curtailing of his artistic career, 'for they have fallen in love with the flax business and have made a fine fortune in it.'¹ Peter's small known œuvre consists of five signed paintings and around twenty attributed works. Compare, for example, the broad technique and treatment of the hat, bagpipe and the goatherd's shirt in his Shepherd with bagpipes, sold in these rooms, 6 July 1983, lot 71, along with its pendant Shepherdess with a lamb.² When the present painting was previously on the market, Dr Anne Lowenthal was thanked for endorsing its attribution to Peter Wtewael, on the basis of photographs.

¹ J. von Sandrart, Teutsche Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste, Nuremberg 1675, vol. 2, Book 3, p. 289.

² See A. W. Lowenthal, Joachim Wtewael and Dutch Mannerism, Groningen 1986, pp. 178–79, cat. nos D-12 and D-13, reproduced in colour plates XXVI and XXVII.