"Flemish School" is copy after Rubens

Pandolfini, from Italy, sells on 13 February 2018 a "Flemish School, 17th century" Bacchic scene with a satyr, estimated at 8,000 to 12,000 Euro.

Some other versions of the same work have appeared at auction over the last few years.

The first one was sold as a "Follower of Rubens", lacks the upper half of this work, and has a tigress instead of some dog.

The second was described as "circle of Rubens" and has the same satyr, but is even more different in other aspects.

All seem to go back to a composition by Rubens. I haven't found the original, but an engraving by Lucas Vorsterman can be found at the Rijksmuseum. While the satyr and animal clearly are taken from this work, all copies have putti which this version of the original hasn't. So it may well be that another Rubens original exited with these variations.

The work for sale has some good elements, and overall it is a good composition, but the work is very brown  (and unlikely to become colourful when cleaned, I think), and has many elements which are rather sketchy as well (as in the second image). This is not du to the scale of the work; it is a large canvas, 174 by 126 cm, so such deficiencies will be more apparent in real life.

"French School" is copy after Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

Brussels Art Auctions, from Belgium (duh), sells on 30 january 2018 a pair of "French School , 18th-19th century" works, showing the Rape of Europa and the Judgment of Paris, estimated at 500 to 600 Euro.

I haven't found an origin for the Judgment of Paris depiction yet, but the Rape of Europa is a copy after the work by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (where "Pierre" presumably is the surname, rather confusing this!) Pierre (1714-1789) was the penultimate French "Premier peintre du roi" (between François Boucher and Joseph-Marie Vien), so quite an important painter in his time, although now he is, well not forgotten but hardly a household name anymore. The original painting (now housed in the Dallas Museum of Art) is a huge work, 240 by 274 cm.

This is a reversed copy, so presumably after an engraving. The estimate seems about right.

"Anonymous" is copy after Jan Brueghel

Loeckx, from Belgium, sells on 30 January 2018 an "Anonymous, 17th century" Golgotha, estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 Euro.

This is a copy after Jan Brueghel, a Crucifixion now in the Alte Pinakothek. As so often with these copies after a good work, the version for sale is pleasing to look at but falls short when seen in detail, because the composition shows the skill of the original artist, but in the details one sees the lack of talent the copiist had. There are some differences between the work, so it may be that the copy is based on another version of this work, not the Munich version, but the basic similarity plus the many identical persons and groups are telling enough.

Still, at 1,500 Euro this seems like a fair price, and it gives me a good reason to show a very good Brueghel.

UPDATE: for sale on 8 April 2018 in Saint Omer, in the north of France, for an unknown estimate, with description "Dutch School, 17th century". If the estimate is lower now (or better still, it is sold without a reserve), this may be a small bargain.

UPDATE 2: sold for 5,000 Euro!

"Attributed to Clara Peeters" may be work by Nicolaes Cave (with provenance added)

Kloss, from Germany, sells on 30 January 2018 an "attributed to Clara Peeters" still life with a cat, estimated at 7,500 to 15,000 Euro.

The work isn't good enough to be by Peeters. Searching for it reveals an entry at the RKD, which indicates that it was offered as Clara Peeters at an auction at the Palais d'Orsay in 1978, but as a Follower of Clara Peeters at Sotheby's Amsterdam in 1997 (where it wasn't sold).

The RKD thinks it might be the work of Nicolaes Cave (a minor Antwerp painter active from 1619 on, died in 1651). It also indicates that it originally came with a pendant. (Wouldn't it be funny if you had a whole series of these, with the cat getting fatter and fatter in every image? Ah, missed opportunities...)

The estimate seems clearly too high and is speculative on the Clara Peeters name. 2,000 to 3,000 Euro seems more realistic.

"Cardinal Howard" is Lord High Admiral Charles Howard

Van Ham, from Germany, sells on 31 January 2018 an "English Master, 17th/18th century" portrait of Cardinal Howard, estimated at 200 to 400 Euro.

The portrait shows someone with the Order of the Garter with the Great George (the image of George slaying the Drgaon), which facilitates the identification of the sitter, as this is a very exclusive club.

Some searching, helped by the fact that the sitter indeed was a Howard, led me to Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham (1536-1624), the English commander at the time of the Armada, so a major figure in English history of the period. 

The painting for sale is a poor partial copy of a portrait by Daniel Mytens (the major portrait painter in England before the arrival of Anthiny Van Dyck), from ca. 1620. It is now housed in the Greenwich Museum. Some colours have been changed, so perhaps it is based on an engraving, but it seeems more likely to be a copy of the painting with some artistic license added. 

The value of the work is probably about the estimate, but having the correct identification may help attract the bidders: I wiould guess there are more marine history buffs wanting this, than people interested in a portrait of some Cardinal Howard.

"Jan de Bray" or someone like Michiel van Musscher

Babuino, from Italy, sells on 22 January 2018 a "Jan de Bray" family portrait, a large canvas (154 by 215 cm) estimated at 10,000 to 15,000 Euro.

It is a good work, but some aspects of it make me doubt the De Bray attribution (given by Didier Bodart in 1992: from what I can see, he is a knowledgeable specialist, so take my comments based on online images with a grain of salt please).

All the woman have the same too large eyes, and some of them share the same somewhat inane smile (caused by stretching the grin a bit too wide it seems). Other De Bray family portraits show much more convincing and individual faces, each with their own look.

The work was offered at Babuino already in July 2017, then with an estimate of 40,000 to 60,000 Euro, so this second offering has an immense discount already.

When looking at other Jan de Bray paintings, one easily sees the differences. Not just the faces, but also the way cloth is painted, the flesh tones... De Bray knows how to use the light to shape his painting and to make all aspects seem real (even though the figurs are a bit posed, not in full movement as you would have with Rubens or so). The second work usess a carpet just like the work for sale does, but to much better, more convincing effect.

This doesn't mean that the work for sale is a bad painting, far from it, and it is close to Jan De Bray in the sense that it is also probably Dutch and from the same period. Now, this is the richest period in Dutch painting history, and the number of good portrait painters active then is just staggering. So finding the actual artist responsible for this painting isn't easy.

Abraham van den Tempel has similar problems with individuality of faces, and rather large eyes and mouths, but his textures seem better.

Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705) shows similar eyes amd mouths and probably comes the closest to the work for sale. But even so his works seems better, and perhaps slightly later.

All in all, it should for now be considered an anonymous Dutch work by a good painter, but not by an absolute master, and probably thus not by De Bray. The current estimate is probably about right, even though it was probably intended as a come)and-get-me low estimate for a real De Bray.

I'll try to find an artist who actually is really close to this style, but for now this is the best I could find.

Original fan design from 1797?

John Nicholson's, from England, sells on 31 January 2018 some "19th century, English School" watercolour illustrations, estimated at £50 to £80.

They caught my attention because of their unusual form, as if they were trompe-l'oeil paintings (a genre which, as regular readers will know, I'm rather fond of).

The auction description provided the title of the works, ""The World Grown Odd and Crazy", and this lead me to two fans made by George Wilson, a London fan maker active between 1795 and 1801. They are described in depth at a 2012 MA theses "catalogue raisonnée" by Rosanna Harrison which you can read here. Images of the two versions of this fan are appended at the end of that catalogue.

The above high resolution image from one of these fans comes from the "Antique fans" blog.

It's a satirical fan with 25 images and accompanying text. The drawings are typical for the period and most remind me of the works by Rodolphe Tôppfer, the Swiss artist who invented the comic strip in the 1840s.

The work for sale at first looks as if someone has cut an unmounted fan in pieces. But some things don't really match. First of all, when an auctioneer claims that something is a watercolour illustration, it is not likely that it is an engraving instead. It could be an engraving handcoloured with watercolour of course.

But looking closely at some details (as far as the not-very-detailed photograph allows) shows that this is not the same image as the fan. The text in the middle is different (e.g. the exlamation mark at the end of the title), and the drawings are all somewhat different as well.

Which leaves us with two possibilities. Either someone has copied nearly all of the fan (we have I believe 22 of the 26 images, plus the central text and the bottom text), and then cut this into pieces for whatever reason. Or this is the actual design by George Wilson for this particular fan, which he made in different pieces which he then could rearrange and display before creating his actual engraving. I don't believe that a complicated engraving like this one is started from scratch (pun intended), from a blank canvass without preparations. Coupled with the quality of the drawings, and the unlikelihood of someone copying this in this manner, makes mequite certain that this is the original design by Wilson.

What's it worth then? Very hard to tell, but certainly more than the estimate. I would suppose that people interested in these fans, in late 18th century satire and illustrations, would be willing to spend £500 on it instead, but it's a wild guess. The fan itself (unmounted) sold for £154 at Christie's in 1992 (lot 77). And of course it is unlikely that most people in these groups will notice this auction in the first place!

"C. 1800 Massacre of the innocents" is neither

Horta, from Belgium, sells on 22 January 2018 a "Flemish School, ca. 1800" "Massacre of the Innocents", an oil on copper estimated at 3,500 to 5,000 Euro.

The work depicts the slaying of adult women, and their immediate elevation to the sainthood as martyrs, and is thus obviously not a "massacre of the innocents" which involves babies and toddlers. The most famous episode of such a massacre in old master paintings is probably the story of Saint Ursula and her 11,000 virgins (known from the Memling masterpiece or someone like the Master of the Saint Ursula Legend).

The work for sale is painted by or after the Francken workshop (though it is one of the many mediocre Francken pieces, not one of the rarer examples which show the true genius of some of the Francken family members). Another, much dirtier but otherwise very similar version was sold as "circle of Frans Francken II" by Christie's in 2011 for £2,250. The version for sale now is not the cleaned version of that one though, which has an extra figure at the bottom centre, and is marginally larger (56 by 74 instead of 54 by 70 cm).

A much better version by Francken can also be found online, but I haven't found the location or auction house or price behind this one.

As happened quite a few times, the origin of the composition is not a Francken, but Peter Paul Rubens. Copyright and plagiarism were regarded differently then than they are now... These preliminary versions can be found in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua (RKD), and in the Museum of Brussels (again, RKD)

As a Circle of Francken II "Saint Ursula" from c. 1650, the estimate is probably about right.

And if you like Francken, you can also check out this "Flemish School 17th century" Resurrection of Lazarus, estimated at 400 to 600€, from the same auction. It is again a work from the circle of the Franckens (especially the Lazarus is identical across many interpretations, the position of the Christ changes somewhat from version to version). It is badly damaged, but cheap, and as Franckens go it is one of the better (though not top quality of course)!

UPDATE: the Saint Ursula sold for 2200 Euro (and had its description changed after I wrote my post), and the Lazarus for 400 Euro.

Flemish School triptych: major work by Adriaen Isenbrant, Hans Memling, or 19th-century pastiche?

Leslie Hindman, from the United States, sells on 23 January 2018 a "Flemish School, 15th / 16th century" triptych with the Virgin and Child in a landscape (central panel), and donors with saints (wings), estimated at $8,000 to $12,000. The website has the important addition "Uncertain of exact age of painting. May be later than the 15th/16th century date listed in the print catalogue.". 

My gut feeling is that it is a 19th century or early 20th century pastiche (a fake, we would call it now), based on colours, condition, and some incongruities, but it is hard to be certain based on online photographs only.

The composition is supposedly by Adriaen Isenbrant (ca. 1480-1551). Isenbrant was an important and rich painter in Bruges, one of the last in the line from Memling and Gerard David, before Antwerp took the dominant position in Flemish painting. The above is a work described by the RKD as "Anonymous Southern Netherlands, ca. 1500, free after Adriaen Isenbrant". The central figures are clearly the same as in the work for sale, but the quality here is much better.

I haven't been able to find the original by Isenbrant (I don't own the Friedländer volume on Isenbrant), but other works attributed to him certainly are somewhat comparable to what we have here.

So could this be an original by Isenbrant then? Perhaps, but it isn't the only element we can trace back to other artists.

The Saint Barbara on the right wing is almost identical to a Barbara painted by Memling on the right panel of the Moreel-triptych in the Groeningemuseum. The style of the face is more modern than Memling would use though, more the style of Isenbrant or Jan Provoost, so I guess we can abandon the attractive fancy that this is an unknown Memling triptych.

And this brings us to the for me most damning piece of evidence against this being a truly old masterpiece, a work made in Bruges ca. 1530 or so. The clothing of the female donor is 40 or 50 years out of fashion compared to the man, or compared to usual Isenbrant works.

E.g. these two wings with donor portraits show how the man is quite similar to the one for sale here, but the woman is totally different.

The face of the male donor is quite out of line with the style of the other parts of the triptych, almost as if the painter here instead of older paintings used a real person instead, and had trouble transposing him convincingly to an Isenbrant style.

And of course, as soon a you think to have nailed it with the clothing, you come across another work which shows the danger of leaping to conclusions. The Sedano triptych by Gerard David (where Isenbrant started his career in Bruges), from ca. 1495, shows the two donors in quite similar attire to what we have here. So it is possible to have an authentic work with this type of clothing!

If it is an original Bruges triptych from ca. 1500, it should be worth considerably more than the estimate, and I can't see this then going for less than 50,000€ (more if it would turn out to be by Isenbrant or another big name). But like I said, my gut feeling is still that this is a good pastiche, a skilled late 19th century painter taking elements from some Bruges paintings and creating a new triptych with them. It will be interesting to see the result of this one!

"Venus and Soldier" is Venus and Mars after Crispijn van der Passche

Macaigne, from France, sells on 21 January 2018 a "Flemish School, 16th century" Venus and Soldier, estimated at 6,000 to 8,000 Euro.

It is a slightly modified copy after an engraving by Crispijn Van de Passe (1589-1611), probably an original design by him ("fecit and excudit" the engraving says at the bottom). As such, it isn't worth the estimate but closer to 2,000 Euro.

Two Antwerp churches in background of Saint Norbert painting

Copages, from France, sells on 10 January 2018 a "Late 16th - Early 17th century" Saint Norbert of Xanten, estimated at 3,500 to 4,000 Euro.

The description correctly refers to his preachings in Antwerp and his founding of the order of the Premonstratensians. The painting shows the Antwerp Cathedral (to the left), and the tower of the Saint Michael's Abbey in Antwerp (which was founded by Saint Norbert) to the right. Interest in this painting will probably mainly come from Antwerp or people linked to the Premonstratensians, it isn't very interesting from a purely artistic point of view.

The same topic has been treated a few times, including the above anonymous drawing from the same period which fails to identify the Saint (information from the RKD, drawing from the Scottish National Gallery). It shows the same two church towers, though less architecturally correct. That the topic was popular in this period was because he wsa a Catholic saint preaching against schismatic "sects" (the Tanchelins for Saint Norbert, the Lutherans and other Protestant branches in the late 16th century). Antwerp had suffered badly under the religious wars.