Tuesday 15 May 2018

Interesting "Susanna and the Elders"

Horta, from Belgium, sells on 28 may 2018 a "Flemish School, 17th century" Susanna and the Elders, an oil on panel estimated at 6,000 to 8,000 Euro.

It looks to be an old copy after a better work, but I haven't found the original for it. There are at least three similar works, but they all have different attributions...

First, and least comparable, is a work attributed to Jasper van der Lanen which was auctioned in Stockholm in 1996 and then for sale at De Jonckheere in Brussels later that same year, according to the RKD. It is a very small example, only 17 by 23 cm.

Much closer to the one for sale are two other depictions of the same subject. The first is a Jan Brueghel II, sold at Lempertz in 2009. I can't find it on the Lempertz site though, only again at RKD.

Lempertz sold a nearly identical composition in 2016, but this time they didn't mention Brueghel but sold it as a work of Izaak van Oosten. It fetched 24,800 Euro.

It is funny to read in the Klaus Ertz expertise report for this attribution that "a further significant difference to the Brueghels is that van Oosten was also fully capable of painting the slightly squat and rounded figures that populate his landscapes himself": not only is it a bit strange to claim that the Brueghels were not able to paint such figures, but more specifically the figures here are a straight copy of the work of Rubens (here shown in the Vorsterman engraving)!

In any case, the figures in the Horta work are not of the same quality, making it an interesting old work but which won't be worth more than the lower estimate at most.


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