Master Paintings Part II

Master Paintings Part II

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 540. Soldiers preparing an ambush.

Property from the Collection of David and Louise Carter

Pieter de Molijn

Soldiers preparing an ambush

Lot Closed

January 30, 03:43 PM GMT

Estimate

15,000 - 20,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from the Collection of David and Louise Carter

Pieter de Molijn

London 1595 - 1661 Haarlem

Soldiers preparing an ambush


oil on panel

panel: 8 1/8 by 11 7/8 in.; 20.6 by 30.3 cm. 

framed: 14 1/4 by 17 3/4 in.; 36.2 by 45.1 cm.  

Galerie Sanct Lucas, Vienna (as Pieter Nolpe);
From whom acquired, 1960. 
Manchester, New Hampshire, Currier Museum of Art, Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt, 29 September 2012 - 6 January 2013 (as Haarlem School, circa 1640).

Pieter de Molijn was a prolific Dutch Golden Age artist active primarily in Haarlem, where he entered the Guild of Saint Luke in 1616.  This painting, which shows soldiers waiting in hiding to ambush oncoming travelers, likely dates to Molijn's early career. It shares a number of notable similarities in figural types, setting and style to his works from about 1629-1631.1  For example, the figures with their large floppy hats come close to the types found in Molijn's signed and dated drawing of 1629,1 the foliage and landscape comes close to that found in an early drawing today in Braunschweig,2 and the setting and style closely compares to an signed oil painting dated 1630 of a Farm Landscape with a wagon and figures recorded by Beck in a private collection, Houston.3  This painting also shares affinities with a panel formerly attributed to the late career of Esias van de Velde but that is today given to Pieter de Molijn and is datable to circa 1630-31.


1. Pen and brown ink with brown wash, 14.3 by 19.2 cm. See H-U. Beck, Pieter Molyn: Katalog der Handzeichnung, Doornspijk 1998, cat. no. 10.

2. Pen and brown ink with brown wash, 20.2 by 30.7 cm. Beck 1998, cat. no. 13.

3. Oil on panel, 41.5 by 65 cm, recorded in the collection of Jimmy Younger. Beck 1998, cat. no. 784.

4. Oil on panel, 26.7 by 37.5 cm. See https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/59173.