Het altaar - The altar

Details

Pieter Ouborg (DUTCH, 1893-1956)
Het altaar - The altar
signed and dated 'P. Ouborg '39' (lower right)
oil on canvas
51 x 65 cm.

Provenance

Johannes and Cricri Tielrooy, thence by descent to the present owner.
On loan to the Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, from 1985 until 2007.

Literature

L. ten Duis a.o., Piet Ouborg, schilder, Eindhoven 1990, p. 54, no. 56, p. 57 (ill.).
Ineke Voorsteegh, Piet Ouborg, Heimwee naar het hart der dingen, 1993, p. 10.

Exhibited

The Hague, Haags Gemeentemuseum, Piet Ouborg, 12 August-14 October 1953, no. 44.
Eindhoven, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Piet Ouborg, 15 May-20 June 1965, no. 24.
Breda, De Beyerd, Piet Ouborg, 26 June-25 July, 1965, no. 24.
Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, Piet Ouborg, Heimwee naar het hart der dingen, 24 October 1993- 9 January 1994.

Special notice

Christie’s charges a premium to the buyer on the Hammer Price of each lot sold at the following rates: 29.75% of the Hammer Price of each lot up to and including €5,000, plus 23.8% of the Hammer Price between €5,001 and €400,000, plus 14.28% of any amount in excess of €400,001. Buyer’s premium is calculated on the basis of each lot individually.

Lot Essay

Just before Ouborg went back to Holland in 1938 he painted the present lot as a hermetic work of a figuratively surreal landscape of a place of sacrifice from archaic times.

To Cricri, who bought the painting in 1946, he wrote in 1939 how deep this works was rooted in his East-Indies past "and with deep nostalgia I think back on the altars where I have made sacrifices, far away in Java, after long pilgrimages and to which destiny threatens to deny access for ever for aimless, wandering, tender and desperately longing people' (Ten Duis, op cit, p. 49).

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