Cornelis Holsteyn

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 14 November 1958, lot 62, for 30 guineas, to Dent;

Dr Ephraim I. Schapiro (1899–1977), London;

By whose Executors sold ('The Property of the late Dr E. I. Schapiro sold by order of the executors'), London, Christie's, 13 July 1979, lot 18;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 11 December 1986, lot 24, for £3,500.

Cornelis Holsteyn belonged to a group of painters from Haarlem that included Salomon and Jan de Bray and Pieter de Grebber, known today as the Haarlem Classicists. Holsteyn moved to Amsterdam in 1647, probably drawn by the demand there for large-scale history painting, acquiring citizenship in 1652. 1654, the year of this painting, seems to have been something of an annus mirabilis for Holsteyn. He became engaged, and he and Machteltje Cornelisdr. Holsblock, who was two years his senior, posted their banns on 24 December. Earlier that year he painted the ceiling and overmantel of the Orphan Chamber of the new Amsterdam Town Hall (now the Royal Palace), a commission met with success that yielded further similar large-scale commissions for Amsterdam public buildings. Holsteyn’s career ended prematurely when he died in late autumn 1658, aged 40. His brief flourishing as a history painter – his first major commission other than for portraiture was in Haarlem in 1647 – probably explains why his work is so rare today. This painting is strongly Italianate in character, with an Arcadian setting inspired by Claude. One must suppose that Holsteyn had seen the Italianate paintings of the Utrecht painters of direct Roman experience such as Breenbergh and Poelenbergh, of whose small-scale panels with female nudes this is an up-scaling, as well as engravings of Claude Lorrain’s works, but the facial types here are distinctive: characteristic of Holsteyn himself, and closer to his Haarlem peers than to anyone from further afield.