Balthasar Van den Bossche

At Meeting Art, an Italian auction house with a somewhat strange name, they sell on 25 April 2015 a "18th century painter" depiction of a sculptor's studio, estimated at 5,000 Euro.

The work is by (or very close by) Balthasar Van den Bossche, a Flemish painter who often painted the same subject in a very similar style (though with ever changing compositions). His paintings don't fetch a lot of money, so having a perhaps correct attribution for this painting doesn't really influence the valuation...

And in a curious coincidence,  Piers Motley, from Devon, sell on 27 April 2015 a "18th century Dutch School" work showing the "School of Art", which is clearly a copy after or close follower of Balthasar Van den Bossche as well. Estimated at £2,000 to £3,000, which seems rather high for a lesser copy (I certainly would prefer the first one I showed, even at double the estimate). Perhaps it's just a Van den Bossche on a bad day, and not a copy, but it still is an inferior work.

It is very close to the above better work by Van den Bossche, sold by Dorotheum in 2010 for 19,000 Euro (together with another work, so price for this work alone is obviously lower!).