"Circle of Frans de Momper" is another Circle of Hendrick van Cleve III Tower of Babel

Schlosser, from Germany, sells on 25 March 2017 a "Circle of Frans de Momper" Tower of Babel as lot 707, estimated at 5,800 Euro.

It is a weaker copy of some works I already showed in a previous blog post, the first of which was sold at Sotheby's in 2016 for 37,500 Euro. The current work uses some of the elements on the right especially, like the arched bridge and the white mountain behind it.

Some other elements come from another Cleve III, this time from the Kroller Muller Museum. Most striking is the arched raised path on the left, with the surrounding buildings. But also the small round pavilion at the corner of the Tower reappears, somewhat to the right, in the work for sale. The Tower itself is closer to the Sotheby's version though.

The work for sale is a bit more sketchy and unfinished than many other Babel paintings, and seems to be a copy: still it is a perpetually popular subject so the estimate may well be right.

UPDATE: the same work is now for sale, on 26 June 2017, at Millon, as a Folllower of Hendrick van Cleve III, estimated at 15,000 to 20,000 Euro. Nice to see my attribution confirmed here!

UPDATE 2: and now, 25 April 2018, for sale at Bonham's as "Circle of Hendrick van Cleve III", estimated at £6,000 to £8,000, or a bit above the original estimate but way below the Millon one. Being offered for sale in Germany, France and the UK in slightly over one year: let's hope it sells now and gets some rest, as it is too good a work to remain unloved.

Variation on the Tower of Babel, probably from the Francken clan

Dorotheum, from Austria, sells on 22 December 2016 a "Flemish School, 17th century" Tower of Babel of unusual dimensions (25 by 76 cm), estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 Euro.

I could find no other examples of this composition, which may be a (large) fragment of a bigger (higher) work: the cutting off of the top of the Tower is a bit strange.

The closest examples are some works by Frans Francken (I or II). The remarkable blue roofs on the Tower can be seen in the above Francken from ca. 1620.

The use of big figures in the foreground which nearly dwarf the actual tower is also rather unusual, but has been practiced most often by Francken.

The work for sale seems, looking at both the composition and the style, to have been inspired by the works of Frans Francken, and is good enough to be by one of the lesser or later members of the clan, like Frans Francken III.

E.g. the  boy on the left can be compared with similar figures in other Francken works.

The King, and his turban / crown, also is comparable to other works by one of the Franckens.

In 2008, it was for sale in Italy at Blindarte as a work by Frans Francken II with an estimate of 25,000 to 35,000 Euro, which was a bit too much. However, the current estimate seems too low,  more of a come-and-get-me one, and the work should be worth about 8,000 Euro.

UPDATE: sold for 5,000 Euro only.

"Circle of Hendrick van Cleve III" is by Lucas van Valckenborch

De Vuyst, Belgium, sells on 22 October 2016 a "Circle of Hendrick van Cleve III" Tower of Babel, estimated at 6,000 to 9,000 Euro.

Hendrick van Cleve III is one the most prolific of the Flemish Babel painters, and in June I highlighted a huge work by or after him.

This Tower however is a "Circle of" or even "Attributed to" Lucas van Valckenborch, another of those Babel painters, since the work for sale is a copy or alternative version of a work I already displayed during the discussion of yet another Babel painting sale in March 2015 (many of these were made, but they are still popular and often wonderful to look at). This version can be found in the Museum of Strasbourg.

The one for sale now is much more detailed though, and much more precisely painted, which is unusual for a copy or for the work of a follower. The way the tower is constructed (e.g. the arches, the flying buttresses, ...) and the general look of the work are closer to another work attributed to the hardly known Lucas van Valckenborch II, from the Museum of Geneva.

It looks as if this work is either the original or much closer to the original, and that both the work from the Strasbourg Museum and the work from the Geneva Museum are copies after it. This is to me more likely than the reverse, that a very skilled copyist took elements from two paintings and created this new one. It thus seems to be a work from either Lucas van Valckenborch or his Workshop, and should be worth at least 20,000 Euro.

UPDATE: sold for 14,000 Euro, double the estimate, but if I'm right still a bargain.

"Flemish School" Tower of Babel: a huge Hendrik van Cleve III?

Retiro Subastas, from Madrid, Spain, sells on 15 June 2016 a huge (154 by 232cm!) "Flemish School, 17th century" Construction of the Tower of Babel estimated at 20,000 Euro.

The auction house points to the many other versions of this story painted in Flanders in the late 16th and early 17th century by artists like Pieter Bruegel, Tobias Verhaecht, Frans Francken and Lucas van Valckenborch.

This specific type though, with a square foot of the tower pointing at the viewer, and a round tower where the first floor seems  to bulge upwards (highly exaggerated perspective with the vanishing point between the square floors and the round floors), can be traced back to one painter, Hendrick van Cleve III (Antwerp, 1525-1595), the most famous of the four Hendrick Van Cleves. He was the brother of Marten van Cleve, who will appear by coincidence on this blog next week. This version, from the Kroller-Muller museum in the Netherlands, measures 41 by 47 cm.

The example in the previous paragraph is clearly superior to the one for sale, but other variants attributed to Cleve are rather comparable to the one we have here. The above black-and-white photo is a version sold at Tajan, Paris in 2001 (found on RKD). The second, rather ornagey example also shows many of the same characteristics and similar figures in the foreground.

Most of these examples are significantly smaller than the one for sale though, and one would expect a version this large to be more detailed. Still, a work of this considerable quality, huge size, popular topic, and with a possible artist (or by a close follower) should easily fetch the estimate. All other versions which were sold over the last few years and which were associated with Cleve (from by him to followers) fetched about 20,000 Euro or a lot more, and none of those I checked even comes close to the size of this one.

Note also the one for sale at Sotheby's on 16 June 2016, again a somewhat better but much smaller one with many identical features, especially the strange perspective in the Tower, but also the bridge on the right, or the position of the King or main figure in the foreground.

UPDATE: this work is now for sale at Hampel, 5 July 2017, with the attribution "Dutch Painter, 17th century" and an estimate of 15,000 to 25,000 Euro. I don't know whether it sold last time and the seller won't get the expected profit, or whether it didn't sell and this is a well-deserved second try in a perhaps better auciton house for this kind of thing. They didn't recognise or accept my Hendrick van Cleve III attribution though ;-)

Sleepers and what happens next: the Sotheby Babel

Sotheby's has in its Old Master sale a "Flemish School, 17th Century" Tower of Babel, estimated at $200,000 to $300,000.

It's a very nice example, not easily placed in the works of a known artist or even closely related to most of the other similar Flemish Babel towers.

It was last sold in October 2014 at Nagel, German auction house. They had estimated it at only 15,000 Euro, but fierce bidding saw it soar to 210,000 Euro. A real sleeper, but slightly more than a year later, it only gets the same estimate as what it sold for two years ago, and without the benefit of being "fresh to the market" (Sotheby's omits the provenance and auction history with a reason, of course). It will be interesting to see if it will sell and if it will make another profit.

UPDATE: sold for $418,000, so about double the previous price and incomparable to the original 15,000 Euro estimate of October 2014!

The leaning tower of Babel

The tower of Babel is a typical Netherlandish subject for paintings, started (I think) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and continued by a lot of others. This one is for sale at Grogan on 22 March (that's tomorrow, I try to be a bit earlier normally), and is estimated at $5,000 to $10,000. It is described as European School, 17th century, but I think we can fairly safely claim it is Flemish. UPDATE: sold for $10,000!

The closest example I could find was the above by Lucas van Valckenborgh. But the one for sale is a lot less detailed and realistic, and clearly leans to one side to boot. But it's still a nice example of a once very popular subject, and for a reasonable price.