DIRCK VAN BABUREN* (before 1595-1624)

Details

DIRCK VAN BABUREN* (before 1595-1624)

A Lute Player

oil on canvas
32½ x 26in. (82.5 x 66cm.)

Provenance

Anon. sale, Christie's. London, Feb. 25, 1924, lot 64
with Leger Galleries, London, 1924

Literature

G. Isarlo, Caravage et le Caravagisme Europeén, 1941, p. 71
L.J. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen - A Dutch Painter in Utrecht and Rome, 1965, p. 85 and note 115, and pl. 113, no. A10, illustrated fig. 32
B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, 1979, p. 18; and 2nd ed. Caravaggism in Europe, revised by L. Verova, 1990, I, p. 55

Lot Essay

Slatkes (loc. cit, p. 113) writes of the present lot, "the superior quality of the ex-Leger picture is apparent even in the surviving photograph." He dates the painting to circa 1621-22, and says it was probaby painted immediately after the 'Boy Musican' of 1621 in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (Slatkes, loc. cit, no. A9). Slatkes and Nicolson both mention two further versions; one in a private collection, Wasington, which Slatkes calls 'a good studio replica' and another in the Page collection, County Wicklow, Ireland, as 'a copy... from the first half of the 17th century'