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Lot Essay
With his uncle by marriage and teacher, Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer developed the market scene which remained a popular genre in the Netherlands and proved influential in the history of still life painting. His importance lies in his exploitation of the theme in Antwerp after the return of its originator, Pieter Aertsen, to Amsterdam. He thus sustained a tradition, which, in the seventeenth century, was to have numerous exponents, most notably Frans Snyders.
Carel van Mander, that knowledgeable judge of painting and historian of art, whose lives of northern artists was published in 1603, admired his work. However, he criticized the artist for not charging enough and recorded that prices for his work rose steeply after his death (see Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters ed. H. Miedema, I, 1994, p. 210).
Beuckelaer became a master in the Antwerp guild of St. Luke in 1560, when he was probably about twenty-five years old. His association with Aertsen probably began early, about the time of Aertsen's marriage in Antwerp to his aunt in 1542. But Beuckelaer's earliest, extant dated work is of 1560, by which time Aertsen had been absent from Antwerp for five years. Van Mander records that Beuckelaer died aged about forty, in about 1574. He was active therefore for about fifteen years, yet his painted oeuvre (not all of which are market scenes) consists now in only about forty items (see catalogue of the exhibition Joachim Beuckelaer etc., Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, 1986-1987, p. 10).
The present work is unpublished; but clearly it has to be at the least associated with Beuckelaer whose monogram is present. No catalogue raisonné of his paintings has been attempted since 1911, but it would not appear to have a close or identical precedent in his extant oeuvre. However, the subject matter - along with the prominent poultry basket, the two protagonists and the composition - clearly belongs to the ethos created by Beuckelaer.
Most closely comparable is the signed and dated market scene of 1564 in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, no. 3935, which is of similar dimensions. The two main protagonists appear to have been the same models, also similar is the dead duck in the foreground. The model for the subsidiary figure in the present lot appears in a painting offered in these Rooms 12 July 1985, lot 135 (as a studio work, another version as by Beuckelaer and studio was offered at Sotheby's, 3 July 1997, lot 112), and in a painting in the Palazzo Bianco, Genoa (for which see catalogue of the exhibition, Joachim Beuckelaer p. 127, note 4 and p. 128, fig 1, p. 128 (where described as by an imitator).
Carel van Mander, that knowledgeable judge of painting and historian of art, whose lives of northern artists was published in 1603, admired his work. However, he criticized the artist for not charging enough and recorded that prices for his work rose steeply after his death (see Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters ed. H. Miedema, I, 1994, p. 210).
Beuckelaer became a master in the Antwerp guild of St. Luke in 1560, when he was probably about twenty-five years old. His association with Aertsen probably began early, about the time of Aertsen's marriage in Antwerp to his aunt in 1542. But Beuckelaer's earliest, extant dated work is of 1560, by which time Aertsen had been absent from Antwerp for five years. Van Mander records that Beuckelaer died aged about forty, in about 1574. He was active therefore for about fifteen years, yet his painted oeuvre (not all of which are market scenes) consists now in only about forty items (see catalogue of the exhibition Joachim Beuckelaer etc., Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, 1986-1987, p. 10).
The present work is unpublished; but clearly it has to be at the least associated with Beuckelaer whose monogram is present. No catalogue raisonné of his paintings has been attempted since 1911, but it would not appear to have a close or identical precedent in his extant oeuvre. However, the subject matter - along with the prominent poultry basket, the two protagonists and the composition - clearly belongs to the ethos created by Beuckelaer.
Most closely comparable is the signed and dated market scene of 1564 in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, no. 3935, which is of similar dimensions. The two main protagonists appear to have been the same models, also similar is the dead duck in the foreground. The model for the subsidiary figure in the present lot appears in a painting offered in these Rooms 12 July 1985, lot 135 (as a studio work, another version as by Beuckelaer and studio was offered at Sotheby's, 3 July 1997, lot 112), and in a painting in the Palazzo Bianco, Genoa (for which see catalogue of the exhibition, Joachim Beuckelaer p. 127, note 4 and p. 128, fig 1, p. 128 (where described as by an imitator).