Figures in a landscape with a bleaching field

Details

KLAES MOLENAER (HAARLEM 1626/ 9 - 1676)
Figures in a landscape with a bleaching field
signed 'K Molenaer' (center right)
oil on panel
18 5⁄8 x 25 1⁄8 in. (47.4 x 64.1 cm.)

Provenance

with Durand-Ruel, New York, where acquired by,
Catholina Lambert (1834-1923), Belle Vista Castle, Paterson, NJ; his sale, American Art Association, New York, 21-24 February 1916, lot 111 ($475 to A.M. Hess).
Anonymous sale; Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 8 January 1981, lot 30, where acquired by the following,
Private collection, and by whom sold,
[Property from a Private Collection]; Sotheby's, New York, 23 January 2003, lot 9, where acquired by the present owner.

Literature

J.A. Welu, 17th Century Dutch Paintings: Raising the Curtain on New England Private Collections, exhibition catalogue, Worcester, 1979, pp. 62-63, no. 16, illustrated.

Exhibited

Worcester, Worcester Art Museum, 17th Century Dutch Paintings: Raising the curtain on New England private collections, 15 September- 11 November 1979, no. 16.
Dallas, The Meadows Museum, Private Views: Flemish and Dutch paintings from Dallas collections, 19 April - 27 May 1990, no. 15.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

The bleaching fields depicted in the foreground were a common subject in seventeenth-century paintings and a particular favorite of Klaes Molenaer. There are two other versions of this composition: one, a nearly identical smaller panel, last sold in 1978 (Dorotheum, Vienna, 13 June 1978, lot 70), and a vertical panel in the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel (inv. no. GK 405).

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