Elegant company with two dwarves in a landscape

Details

Attributed to Juan Bautista del Mazo (c. 1-1667)
Elegant company with two dwarves in a landscape
oil on canvas
13 3/8 x 11¾ in. (34 x 29.8 cm.)

Provenance

Alcazar, Madrid (according to a label on the reverse).
Comte de Bourke, Danish Minister in Spain, by whom brought to England in 1814.
Rt. Hon. Sir John Leach, Bt., Master of the Rolls; (+) sale Alexander Rainy, London, 19 March 1835, lot 17, the companion picture to lot 16 (£51 to Lansdowne).
Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquis of Lansdowne (1780-1863), Lansdowne House, London and Bowood House, Wiltshire, and by descent; Christie's, London, 16 May 1952, lot 95 (550 gns. to the Arcade Gallery).

Literature

Mrs. Jameson, Catalogue of the pictures at Bowood, no. 60.
W. Stirling, Annals of the Artists of Spain, London, 1848, III, p. 1408, no. 60, as Velázquez.
C.B. Curtis, Velazquez and Murillo, London and New York, 1883, p. 27, no. 54, as Velázquez.
C. Justi, Diego Velazquez and his Times, trans. Prof. A.H. Keane, London, 1889, pp. 334-5, as Velázquez.
G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, II, London, 1854, p. 151, at Lansdowne House, in the Library, as Velázquez, 'treated with great freedom and spirit, in a warm tone'; III, 1854, p. 164, at Bowood, in the Cabinet, as Velázquez, 'The landscape with water and hills in the distance very poetical, especially the sky, which has a deep glow of colour'.
G.E. Ambrose, Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures belonging to the Marquess of Lansdowne, K.G., at Lansdowne House, London and Bowood, Wilts., London, 1897, pp. 120-1, no. 151, as Velázquez.
A.L. Mayer, Velazquez, London, 1936, p. 33, no. 138, fig. 56, as 'probably by a lesser painter than Mazo'.
J. López-Rey, Velázquez, London, 1963, pp. 178-9, no. 163, fig. 219, as Follower of Velázquez.

Exhibited

London, British Institution, 1816, no. 46.
London, British Institution, 1835, no. 119.
London, Guildhall Art Gallery, 1901, no. 105.
Madrid, Ministerio de Educación Nacional: Dirección General de Bellas Artes, Exposición Velázquez y lo Velazqueño, 1960, no. 103, as 'Mazo'.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

This and its erstwhile companion at Bowood, with two men on horseback and a servant, which is clearly by the same hand, are among the relatively few Spanish genre pictures of the kind of this period. With two other pictures, subsequently in the Sutherland and Ashburton collections, these were acquired by the Comte de Bourke and claimed to be from the Palacio Real, Madrid. While the traditional attribution to Velázquez is clearly untenable, the artist was evidently in his immediate circle.

Lopez-Rey, loc. cit., noted that the figure of the bare-headed dwarf derives from the artist's Portrait of Sebastián de Morra, whilst that of the seated woman holding a fan relates to elements of del Mazo's Two figures against a grassy bank at Pollock House, Glasgow, and his Fountain of the Tritons at Aranjuez in the Prado, Madrid.

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