18th c. Flemish is copy after Hendrik Goltzius

Chorley's, from England, sells on 28 January 2020 an "18th century Flemish School" Salvator Mundi,  estimated at £300 to £500.

It is a good copy after an engraving by Hendrick Goltzius from 1589 (found at the Rijksmuseum). There seems to be no reason to date this to the 18th century and not to the 17th century, when this would have been more popular.

It should be worth £700 to £1000 probably.

UPDATE: indeed, sold for £800.

An unknown Antonius Claeissens?

Chorley's, from England, sells on 28 January 2020 a "17th century Flemish" Virgin and Child, estimated at £700 to £1,000.

The remarkable physique of the Virgin, with the very broad shoulders, makes me believe that we should look in the direction of the Claeissens brothers from Bruges.

Probably the closest is a work by Antonius Claeissens (active 1551-1613), which has a very similar Virgin, with a comparable background as well (found through RKD). The row of tassels at the top is comparable, but most striking is the nearly identical dress of the Virgin, with the same border decoration.

The chances of having the same bodytype for the rather solemn virgin, with the same dress and decoration, same type of flower, same type of background, but a different artist or workshop, seems rather slim.

Antoon Claeissens is sadly the least interesting of the four Claeissens (compared to his brother Pieter the Younger and certainly his other brother Gilles or his father Pieter the Elder). Even so, this is a relatively rare work from the very last spasms of the great School of Bruges which started with Van Eyck, Memling and Christus, and which was already overtaken by the more modern art of the Pourbus family.

This work should be worth 2,000 to 3,000 Euro.

UPDATE: sold for 7,500, impressive!

Copy after a lost Rubens?

Chorley's, from England, sells on 28 January 2020 a "Flemish School, 17th/18th century" Achilles discovered among the daughters of Lycomedes, a very large canvas (150 by 228!) estimated at £2,000 to £3,000.

It is not painted terribly well (it looks more like a 19th century copy, though a good enough one to be worth buying), but the composition is pure Flemish Baroque quality, so that's where I started looking.

Sure enough, the Prado has a Rubens / Van Dyck collaboration with the same topic and many similar parts (e.g. the two daughters at the front), but it isn't the same in the end.

Looking further lead me to the Danish Statens Museum for Kunst, which has a Rubens drawing showing the composition of the work for sale. Well, the horizontal version that is, where all figures are placed together much closer, giving a more intense painting, and avoiding the empty vertical space right in the middle.

The RKD lists a copy after this work, offered by Hampel auctions in Germany in 2015 (I can't immediately find it there). This version was known as early as 1854 as by Van Dyck, and later as by Rubens, but is now considered a (very good) copy.

The Prado version is known through several copies (from Nicholas Ryckmans and Cornelis Visscher II), but the other version, which interests us here, also has been turned into an engraving, by Frans van den Wijngaerde: this engraving explicitly states that it is a work after Van Dyck. As it is made in the decades directly after Rubens and Van Dyck died, chances are that this attribution is correct. This version was found at the Rijksmuseum. The British Museum states that despite the engraving being made between 1630 and 1645, they are still wrong with the Van Dyck attribution and it is a Rubens anyway.

The version for sale is the only one I can find with the horizontal format. Whether this is an invention by the copiist, or some lost or online not available version exists with this less successful format is unclear to me. It is in any case an interesting work if you are interested in Rubens or Van Dyck.

UPDATE: sold for £4,500, double the estimate.

Winyatt? No, Whyatt

Chorley's, from England, sells on 31 january 2017 a "G. Winyatt" moonscape together with an anonymous view of Venice, estimated at £40 to £60.

I have only limited time, so no full research here (and no more interesting painting, which is too bad), but it is one of the better (or at least more atmospheric) works by Geroge Whyatt, a British or Irish artist (1855-1945 or thereabouts).

His works occasionally come to auction and fetch anything between 100 and 1500 Euro. This one is good, though small, and should fetch at least £200.

"After the Old Master", no name needed!

At Chorley's, auction house in Gloucestershire, they sell on 19 May a nice painting with a strange description: "After the Old Master/Madonna and Child, St John and another child in a Landscape", a relatively large work (122 by 96) estimated at £2,000 to £3,000.

Apparently "the Old Master" is none other than "Van Dyck", and the work is simply known as "Charity", and can be found in the National Gallery. While the copy is competently painted, the colours are rather garish and all subtlety of the original is lost. May be worth its estimate, but not more probably. UPDATE: not sold