"Attributed to Cornelis de Vos" is workshop of Jacob Jordaens

Stahl, from Germany, sells on 13 April 2019 an "attributed to Cornelis de Vos" portrait of a lady, estimated at 3,500 Euro.

It is actually a partial copy of Jordaens' "Portrait of a young married couple" from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting for sale is 48 by 42 cm, while the full original is 124 by 92 cm. It looks as if the version for sale is, for the same section of the work, actually somewhat bigger than the original. It is also slightly darker, and slightly less precise painted.

Even so, it is a beautiful work, very close to the original, and may be considered a workshop copy of one of the best Jordaens portraits from the height of his career. As such, seeing that it is a very attractive work which will appeal to many collectors (not some religious or obscure mythological topic, but a self-assured young woman with a characterfull look) it should be easily worth 20,000 Euro, and may well fetch 50,000 Euro if two collectors fall in love with it.

UPDATE: sold for 50,000 Euro!

"Emmanuel Noterman" is "Zacharie Noterman" instead

Jordaens, from Belgium, sells on 25 October 2016 an "Emmanuel Noterman", signed, a small panel (15 by 21 cm) estimated at 100 to 180 Euro.

It is actually a work by his younger brother Zacaharie (or Zacharias) Noterman instead. Emmanuel lived from 1808 to 1863, Zacharie from 1820 to 1890. Their works are fairly similar, but in general Zacharie is somewhat better and more sought after.

This is a sketch, perhaps means as preparation for a larger panel but obviously good enough to be signed. To me, it is very appealing, much more lively than the finished works, and show his great technical skill. These kind of works are not great art, they are typical commercial genre works where the older moralising message has been turned into amusement only; but one can still easily see why they were popular, and it would still be a great thing to hang on a wall somewhere (though not a large wall obviously).

I haven't found similar sketches by Zacharie in recent sales, but it should be worth 600 to 1,000 Euro. A painting which was about twice as big (and hence more detailed, more polished) sold for nearly $6,000 at Doyle in 2014.

UPDATE: now for sale at Horta (20 February 2017), as Zacharie Noterman, with an estimate of 350 to 500 Euro only.  Which is more than three times the Jordaens estimate, but still below what I thought it would be worth. No idea what it sold for at Jordaens!

When an El Lissitzky is an upside-down Malevich

Jordaens, from Belgium, sells on 24 August 2016 a "Mixed technique composotion, monogrammed E. L." without an estimate.

"Mixed technique" or "Mixed media" is a curse, it gives the impression of being an original (painted) but is in reality a print. Auction houses would be nicer if they made these things a bit clearer.

"E.L." is clearly El Lissitzky, one of the most important of the Russian suprematicists.second only to Malevich. This work is unusually colourful and detailed for him. The reason may be that it isn't a work by El Lissitzky, but a work by Malevich turned upside down (with a few colours changed) and given a fake monogram.

Usually the fakers are either a bit more laborious, really creating a new work using some poorly understood and copied elements of the originals, or they are even more lazy, simply taking a print of a real work and adding a fake signature (and normally a "EA" épreuve d'artiste marking, which should be rarer than a number but is harder to check for unicity). This one is a first for me.

Value is what you would give for a Malevich poster in a frame (the frame looks a lot older than the image which is brand new).

UPDATE: Jordaens have now changed the description to include the information that it is based on a Malevich reproduction. Great!

UPDATE 2: images of the monogram on the work for sale, and some original El Lissitzky monograms, to make it obvious that it was intended to look like a work by him (no matter how poorly done  to anyone studying his work for even a short while). This was an attempted El Lissitzky fake, no more, no less.

"Old painting" with strange story is copy after Jacob Jordaens

Rops, from Belgium, sells on 7 March 2016 an "Old painting", oil on canvas, no description (update: even worse, now described as "Jeu de Boules" or Bowls Game!), estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 Euro.

It isn't well painted, but the iconography, the story, was intriguing, and the composition was remarkable as well, with the frontal view of the action.

Searching for it first led me the story of Atalanta and Melanion, where Melanion threw golden apples to the ground; because Atalanta stopped to pick them up, Melanion could win the race. The prize for Melanion (or Hippomenes) was marriage to Atalanta. All's well that ends well, except that this is Greek mythology, so they end up getting transformed into animals and forced to carry out some task into eternity.

Now knowing the story (although even now I don't know what the caged children are doing there in the painting), I found the original of this work quite easily: a Jacob Jordaens from 1646, sold at Sotheby's in 1986 (found at the RKD).

As a rather poor copy, it will struggle to get near the bottom estimate. UPDATE: sold for 1,700 Euro, slightly more than I expected.

Oh, and the children in cages: perhaps they were some ingenious 17th century system to prevent children-spectators from being crushed at busy festivities? Just guessing.

Another version of Jordaens' early Erichthonios?

Béguinage, Belgian auction house, sells on 15 September 2015 a "17th century, attributed to Jacob Jordaens" painting. No size, no estimate, no better pictures, only extra information is that it has been partially restored in the 1960s.

It is a variation on Jordaens' wellknown early work "The daughters of Cecrops discover the child Erichthonios" (1617, now in the Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts, first picture), which is based on Rubens' depiction of the same story (1616, the Liechtenstein Museum).

In the one for sale, the old woman is moved from the right side of the picture to the middle, and much closer resembles the version by Rubens. The added classical scenery to the left is also reminiscent of Rubens.

The most striking of the details provided by the auction house is the face of the woman on the right. Compared to the real one (bottom picture), it is not a simple copy, but more like another version. It is clearly done by a competent artist, but is it by Jordaens, his workshop, or someone unrelated?

Looking at another head, the problems with the version for sale become a lot more apparent. The one for sale is flat, lifeless, grey, while the real one is vibrant, full of convincing details. A worse artist, an unfinished work, a poor restoration? Perhaps a bit of all three?

The final detail provided by the auction house, the dog, doesn't make us much wiser. It does seem to indicate that the same dog has posed for both works, or that the artist of the one for sale could well imagine how the Jordaens dog would look with his head in another position.

Finally, I have made a cutout of the added old woman in the middle of the painting for sale, and put the Rubens one beneath it for comparison. The detail from the one for sale is way too small to say anything meaningful wrt the artist, but the similarities are striking, certainly coupled with the position in the painting.

So, the big questions, who painted it and what's it worth? Very hard to tell. It may be a preliminary study by Jordaens, a work by a close follower of Jordaens, or a much later copy, perhaps intended to look like a work between the Rubens and the final Jordaens. The restoration (or prior history of the work) may well have stripped much of its charm and qualities away, leaving it rather bland, although it may also be unfinished. Not knowing the size of the work obviously doesn't help either. Still, as a gamble, it should be worth 5,000 to 10,000 Euro, if you have that kind of money to gamble of course...

Since writing the above, I have received some further information. Still no estimate, but dimensions: 148 by 119 cm. And some more detailed photo's:

"Attributed to Erasmus Quellius II" is a copy after an engraving after Rubens

At Jordaens, Belgian auction house, they sell on 19 May 2015 a, "Attributed to Erasmus Quellinus II" Batle of the Amazons, estimated at 5,000 to 6,000 Euro.

It seems doubtful that Quellinus would paint after an engraving after a Rubens. The ca. 1615 "Battle of the Amazons" is now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. I doubt this copy is worth 5,000 Euro, if the buyers would get the right information.

Jordaens?

At Fleck, an auction house in Marseille, they sell on 12 April 2015 a "Cloelia crossing the Tiber" attributed to Jordaens, without estimation. The attribution is done by "Cabinet Turquin", who do a lot of attributions of Old Masters on smaller French auctions, but in this case I have no idea where they got this from. It may be an "after" or "follower of" Jordaens, but this one, unless there is something quite different hidden beneath the visible paint, should never be called "attributed to Jordaens". The painting looks decidedly 18th century.

Whether tje subject is correctly identified is also not clear, there doesn't seem to be much to base (or discredit) the given subject on. The same painting, with same attribution and subject, was for sale in Marseille in 2007 as well, but I haven't been able to find the result of that auction.

The composition may be by Jordaens, as he liked to cram his pictures full with bodies: but the way it is painted, the flesh, the faces, the clothing, the horse, are all vastly inferior to his work.