Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621-1674)

THE PROPERTY OF A LADY

Details

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621-1674)

Soldiers playing Tric-Trac in an Interior

signed with initials and dated 'G v E. A 1651'

17¼ x 14 7/8in. (43.8 x 37.8cm.)

Provenance

(Probably) Cornelis Dusart, the painter; (+) sale, van de Vinne, Haarlem, 21 Aug. 1708, lot 51 ('Verkeerders van Eeckhout'; see A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, 1915, p.25, Inventory no.19)
Baron Schonborn; sale, Amsterdam, 16 April 1738, lot 158 (71 florins) Jeronimus Tonneman; (+) sale, H. de Leth, Amsterdam, 21ff. Oct. 1754, lot 17 (157 florins to Braamcamp)
Gerret Braamcamp; (+) sale, Amsterdam, 31 July ff. 1771, lot 60
Bicker and Wijkersloot Sale, Amsterdam, 19 July 1809, lot 6 (635 florins to Nieuwenhuys)
Alexis Delahante; sale, London, 1811 (100gns. to Stafford; see G. Redford, Art Sales, 1888, II, p.297)
George Granville, 2nd Marquess of Stafford (1758-1833), created Duke of Sutherland in 1833, Stafford House, London
His son, George Granville, 2nd Duke of Sutherland (1786-1861), Stafford House, London, and by descent
with Agnew's, London, 1926-7
with A. S. Drey, Munich, 1927-35
H. Kaufmann, Vienna
Mr. and Mrs. William Miesegaes, New York, 1956
Private Collection, Detroit, 1960 (according to MacLaren, see below)

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., IV, 1833, p.130, no.38, under Gerard ter Borch but with the note 'The writer suspects this to be by the hand of Eeckhout'; VII, 1836, pp.246-7, as Eeckhout
G. F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 1854, II, p.70 'A delicate cabinet picture, executed in the style of Terburg by this excellent scholar of Rembrandt'
A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, I, 1906, p.482
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., V, 1913, p.42, Gerard ter Borch no.109 (repeating Smith's 1833 entry) and no.110
R. Bangel in Thieme-Becker, Künstler-Lexikon, X, 1914, p.356
W. R. Valentiner, Pieter de Hooch (Klassiker der Kunst), 1929, pp.XXIV and 288, illustrated p.182
G. Isarlo, Rembrandt et son entourage, La Renaissance, vol.19, no.9, 1936, p.34
E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, etc., III, 1955, p.539
N. MacLaren, National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School, 1960, p.117
S. J. Gudlaugsson, Gerard ter Borch, II, 1960, p.255, no.C53, and p.279, no.D27
W. Bernt, The Netherlandish Painters of the Seventeenth Century, 1970, I, pl.356
R. Roy, Studien zu Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Vienna dissertation, 1972, pp.52ff., 142 and 228, no.115
P. C. Sutton, Pieter de Hooch, 1980, pp.13-14 and fig.6
W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, II, 1983, p.724, note 14, no.5, and p.747, no.505, illustrated p.868
P. C. Sutton in the catalogue of the exhibition, Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, and Royal Academy, London, 1984, p.L

Exhibited

London, British Institution, 1849, no.97
Raleigh, North Carolina, Museum of Art, Rembrandt and his Pupils, 16 Nov.-30 Dec. 1956, p.117, no.27, illustrated
Sheffield City Art Galleries, Local Heritage, 17 April-17 May 1970, no.17

Engraved

William Finden, 1817, in Engravings of the Most Noble the Marquis of Stafford's Collection of Pictures in London, etc., with comments by William Young Ottley, 1818, Vol.IV, Class III, p.117, no.111*, pl.52

Lot Essay

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout is best known as a painter of religious and historical subjects, the areas in which his style comes closest to that of Rembrandt, of whom he seems to have been a great friend as well as one of the most talented pupils. An artist of great versatility, he also painted genre pictures, landscapes and portraits, executed etchings and designs for gold and silverwork and occasionally wrote poetry. Peter Sutton, following Valentiner, has noted the significance of van den Eeckhout's genre paintings in the development of the simplified form of genre scene, with only a few figures and in an upright format, first seen in the years around 1650 and so popular in Dutch art in the following decades. The present picture, which would seem to be van den Eeckhout's earliest dated genre painting, probably antedates the first genre paintings of the new type by Pieter de Hooch, such as his 'Tric-Trac Players' in the National Gallery, Dublin (Sutton, op. cit., 1980, p.77, no.12, colour pl.II and pl.11). The development is demonstrated in the work of Gerard ter Borch, from his early horizontal genre scenes such as the 'Tric-Trac Players' of c.1640 formerly in the Bremen Kunsthalle (Gudlaugsson, op. cit., I, 1959, illustrated p.187), reminiscent of Willem Duyster's work in the early 1630s, to mature works such as the 'Unwelcome News' of 1653 in the Mauritshuis.

The present picture has regularly been incorrectly described in the recent literature. The errors all seem to stem from Valentiner, who,
while giving the date correctly as 1651 on his p.XXIV (although on p.288 in the notes to the plates, the caption for the present picture is exchanged for that of a Maes illustrated on the same page), describes the support as panel. The present painting must be the work included in the Raleigh exhibition in 1956 (part of a Raleigh loan label remains on the stretcher), but it was described in the catalogue written by Valentiner as dated 1655, on panel and measuring 13½ x 11½in. Sumowski, while illustrating what is undoubtedly the present picture, follows the description given in the Raleigh catalogue (although with the date as 1653) and is forced to suggest that there were two versions of identical composition but different size and support. Roy inexplicably gives the date as 1657

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