The village wedding - an oil sketch

Name: Jan Havickz. Steen (Leiden 1641-1676)
Brand: The village wedding - an oil sketch
Price: 26000.00 EUR
Availability: SoldOut

Price Realised EUR 32,500

Estimate

EUR 30,000 - EUR 50,000

Closed: 6 Oct 2021

Loading details

Jan Havickz. Steen (Leiden 1641-1676)

The village wedding - an oil sketch

Price Realised EUR 32,500

Closed: 6 Oct 2021

Price Realised EUR 32,500

Closed: 6 Oct 2021

Details Lot Essay Related Articles More from

Jan Havickz. Steen (Leiden 1641-1676)
The village wedding - an oil sketch
oil on paper laid down on canvas
30.5 x 41 cm.

Baron August Janssen, Brussels; his sale Frederik Muller, Amsterdam, 26 April 1927, p. 180, lot 114, (Dfl. 500).
with Jacques Goudstikker, Amsterdam, 1927 (inv. no. 1879).
Looted by the Nazi authorities, July 1940.
with Alois Miedl, Galerie Jacques Goudstikker, Amsterdam.
Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne (inv. no. WRM 2695), acquired from the above, 17 April 1943.
Returned by the above to The Netherlands, 1950.
In the custody of the Dutch Government (inv. no. NK 2192).
Restituted in February 2006 to the heir of Jacques Goudstikker; her sale, Christie's Amsterdam, 14 November 2007, lot 37, as 'Attributed to Jan Steen'.
with S. Bijl, Alkmaar where acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

W. Martin, Catalogue de la Collection de peintures du Baron Janssen à Bruxelles, Brussels, 1923, p. 180, no. 114.
W. Martin, 'Neues über Jan Steen', in Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, 1927-28, p. 330, no. 37, illustrated.
C. Wright, Paintings in Dutch Museums. An Index of Oil Painitngs in Public Collections in The Netherlands by Artists born before 1870, London, 1980, p. 436.
K. Braun, Alle tot nu toe bekende schilderijen van Jan Steen, Rotterdam, 1980, pp. 90-91, no. 40.
Old Master Paintings: An illustrated summary catalogue, Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (The Netherlandish Office for the Fine Arts), The Hague, 1992, p. 281, no. 2470, illustrated.
W. Kloek, Bij de Dopsbruiloft van Jan Steen, manuscript, 2008 (revised ed. 2020).

Rotterdam, Rotterdamsche Kunstkring, Catalogue de la Collection Goudstikker d'Amsterdam, 11-26 June 1927, no. 65.
Amsterdam, Jacques Goudstikker Gallery, Catalogue des Nouvelles Acquisitions de la Collection Goudstikker, October-November 1927, no. 120.

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.

Conditions of Sale
FAQs
This lot is offered by Christie's Amsterdam B.V

Brought to you by

General Inquiries

A Christie's specialist may contact you to discuss this lot or to notify you if the condition changes prior to the sale.

infoamsterdam@christies.com +31 20 5755 957

Lot Essay

Sold in these premises in the sale of the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker in 2007 with an attribution to Steen, this charming and unique oil sketch has since again been fully attributed to Jan Steen by both Wouter Kloek and Guido Jansen.

Wouter Kloek, to whom we are grateful for his help in cataloguing this lot, regards this work as one of the very rare oil sketches by Jan Steen which has been preserved. He argues oil sketches such as the present must have been part of Steen's own collection and key for the artist in maintaining his enormous stock of various motifs. He must have possessed a large collection of sketches that he drew from time and again, sometimes much later, as models for certain figures and groups that he would reuse in the same poses in a variety of compositions. Curiously almost no drawings can be attributed to Steen with any confidence and oil sketches on paper were not often employed by artists working in the northern Netherlands. Indeed, it is only found in the oeuvres of Dirck Hals and his pupil, Anthonie Palamedesz., both, like Steen, specialists in genre painting (see P. Schatborn, , The Hague, 1981, pp. 74-6). Wouter Kloek further points out that X-ray examination and close observations with the naked eye or through the microscope of a number of works revealed Steen's characteristic style of underpainting, which corresponds very closely to the technique of the present oil sketch. In preparation of the 1996 exhibition , “such sketches with the brush were found in almost all the paintings examined, executed in dark brown or black” (see: M. Bijl, ‘The artist’s working method’ in: , Washington/Amsterdam, 1996, p. 86).

The peasant wedding was one of Steen’s favourite subjects and was repeatedly painted by him. Closest in composition to the present sketch are the finished work formerly in the Goudriaan Collection, Rotterdam (Hofstede de Groot, no. 471, Braun, no. 39), dated to 1655 and the painting in Tokyo (Hofstede de Groot, no. 482, Braun, no. A-294), which was probably finished by a different hand. Multiple figures, groups of figures, gestures and compositional elements are either identical or alike to those in the oil sketch. Also in the peasant wedding in The Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, several passages are exactly like those in the oil sketch.

Kloek suggests Steen must have painted this sketch around 1655.