Wednesday 13 April 2016

"Spanish School, 18th century" is follower of Alejandro de Loarte or Juan van der Hamen

Anteo, from Spain, sells on 14 April 2016 a "Spanish School, 18th century" still life, estimated at 900 Euro.

It is a very dark work that seems to show potential beneath the grime. The topic and manner of painting is reminiscent of the works of Alejandro de Loarte (ca. 1600-1626), who painted works in the style of Joachim de Beuckelaer, and still lifes like this one (often also with some fish included). The "floating" (actually suspended) lemons or oranges are a recurring theme in them.

Perhaps even closer are the works of Juan Van der Hamen y Leon (love that name!) (1596-1631). His works are better than the one for sale though.

There were a lot of others working in the same style in the same years, like Juan Sanchez Cotan or slightly later Juan de Zurbaran (son of the Zurbaran).


A real De Loarte would be worth some 5,000 Euro probably, a real Van der Hamen closer to 50,000; what this one is actually worth depends on what a cleaning would reveal. It can hardly be much lower than the estimate though. As for the date, I would place it closer to 1650 than the 18th century.


UPDATE: Now for sale on 29 June 2017 at Nagel, in Germany, for 7,000 Euro, still without attribution but correctly dated to the 17th century.

2 comments:

  1. Dear friend :
    I bought this painting at Nagel past year , actually we think a possible atributtion to Miguel de Pret .
    Many thanks for your blog and your recomendations .
    Kind regards.
    Severo Pardo

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  2. It seems to have had a De Pret attribution in 2016 already, when it was offered at Alcala for 30,000 Euro! http://www.alcalasubastas.es/es/subastas/44-56601/atribuido-a-miguel-de-pret-amberes-1595-zaragoza-1644-cesta-con-guisantes-y-cerezas-una-berenjena-y-dos-pepinos-sobre-una-ventana-de-la-que-cuelgan-unos-limones

    I see that he is Flemish (Antwerp) a well, and comparable to Juan van der Hamen, so I wasn't too far off! An interesting painting, but it needed cleaning to reveal all its glory.

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