Two ducks swimming in the Craesbeeck

Material Culture, from Philadelphia, US, sells on 5 December 2016 an "After Joos van Craesbeeck" "Antique Flemish Tavern Painting", estimated at $1,000 to $2,000.

It has some old labels on the back, and while one should always be wary of those (they may be outright forgeries, or old labels not belonging with this painting), it would be stupid to ignore them.

The largest label says, as far as I can decipher it (things between square brackets are my comments, things between round brackets are uncertain bits or additions):
1. Left side

EASTMAN CHASE [J .Eastman Chase was a Boston art dealer from the 1870s to the 1920s]
...Water...
...(A)pril 9, 1..2
...Armory [or Amary or Arnary]:
...back Julia
...clure I ??? f(o)r
...eans the name
... Duc". He was
???? lived at
The Hague in 16... The
artist was a ???
painter, a pupil of P(aul)

2. Right side

Ducq
...
has been the painter
of your picture, which
in my opinion is ???
??? period
Yours (truly)
[unreadable signature]
C. W. Amary

There are some additional bits lower down, but these to me are unreadable.

The smaller label reads:
... Le D...
born 1636(?) - 16(97?)
at
The Hague - pupil P...l Potter
(and an unreadable final line)

So, I went looking for a pupil of Paulus Potter, born in The Hague in 1636. 19th century books listed a "John Le Duc", which matched other elements on both labels, but that name no longer appears in modern works.

Turns out that it refers to Johan Le Ducq, who was born 1629/1630 (not 1636 as was thought earlier) and was a pupil of Potter. Only problem is that his work doesn't resemble that of the work for sale.

Another contemporary artist whose works do resemble the work for sale though, is Jacob Duck (1600-1667). So it seems likely that the two somehow got confused between the time the work wsa painted, and the time the label was written. Perhaps the work had a signature which was misread, perhaps there was some oral tradition as to who painted it, perhaps Eastman Chase simply made a mistake.

Looking at the painting, it perhaps isn't good enough to be a Jacob Duck, and should be described as "Attributed to Jacob Duck" probably. Even so, the estimate is relatively low and I wouldn't be surprised to see this fecth the upper estimate. That is, with the right description. As it stands, it is a painting with a wrong name (or no name) on it, which has already been offered (in the UK at MacDougall, estimate £2,000). Furthermore, the man on the left is poorly painted (restored?), the man in the centre and other elements are a lot better though.

Some final searching reveals that it has also been offered at Thomaston Auctions (US, May 2015), who did a much better job cataloguing it, as they at least deciphered the labels. However, they stuck with the Johan Le Ducq name. Estimated at $3,000, it was once again unsold.

As for the Joos van Craesbeeck name the auctioneer put on it, I don't see the connection. His works are much more in the Adriaen Brouwer tradition, with poorer, often drunk characters.

And the title of this blog post? Well, a beek (or beeck) is a brook, a rivulet, so we have Ducq, Duck and the Craes brook...

UPDATE: sold for 1,000 Euro.