.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
An autograph version of the picture of the same dimensions, signed and dated 1614, sold Sotheby's, New York, 6 June 1985, lot 76 ($230,000), now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. .
Pieter Lastman was arguably the most important artist in early seventeenth-century Amsterdam, the master of the young Rembrandt. After studying in Italy in the first years of the century, he returned to the United Provinces, where he remained for the rest of his life. One of the most influential apsects of his art was his use of Biblical texts as the subjects of his pictures; this source of inspiration, and Lastman's resultant history paintings, were reflected in the work of the young Rembrandt.
The subject of the present painting was first treated by the artist in his earliest known work, a drawing of 1601 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven). In that, Hagar sits facing to the right, looking with an expression of pleasant surprise at the angel which stands on the ground, his arm on her shoulder, pointing to the well. Ishmael is visible only as a pair of legs on the left, suggesting that the image has at some point been reduced. This subsequent composition is altogether more successful, and demonstrates Lastman's development in the intervening years: he has here succeeded in injecting a new force of dramatic tension into the subject. The angel no longer stands statically by Hagar like a friendly guide, but instead appears, aloft and foreshortened, with Hagar presented with her head raised and arms outstretched in gratitude and wonder.
Lastman had first revisited the story of Hagar and Ishmael in a painting of The Dismissal of Hagar (1612; Kunsthalle, Hamburg), and his use of the general subject was to be repeated frequently by Rembrandt and his school. Rembrandt himself made a drawing after the three figures in the Hamburg painting (Albertina, Vienna), and treated the present subject in a drawing of circa 1652 (Kunsthalle, Hamburg).
Pieter Lastman was arguably the most important artist in early seventeenth-century Amsterdam, the master of the young Rembrandt. After studying in Italy in the first years of the century, he returned to the United Provinces, where he remained for the rest of his life. One of the most influential apsects of his art was his use of Biblical texts as the subjects of his pictures; this source of inspiration, and Lastman's resultant history paintings, were reflected in the work of the young Rembrandt.
The subject of the present painting was first treated by the artist in his earliest known work, a drawing of 1601 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven). In that, Hagar sits facing to the right, looking with an expression of pleasant surprise at the angel which stands on the ground, his arm on her shoulder, pointing to the well. Ishmael is visible only as a pair of legs on the left, suggesting that the image has at some point been reduced. This subsequent composition is altogether more successful, and demonstrates Lastman's development in the intervening years: he has here succeeded in injecting a new force of dramatic tension into the subject. The angel no longer stands statically by Hagar like a friendly guide, but instead appears, aloft and foreshortened, with Hagar presented with her head raised and arms outstretched in gratitude and wonder.
Lastman had first revisited the story of Hagar and Ishmael in a painting of The Dismissal of Hagar (1612; Kunsthalle, Hamburg), and his use of the general subject was to be repeated frequently by Rembrandt and his school. Rembrandt himself made a drawing after the three figures in the Hamburg painting (Albertina, Vienna), and treated the present subject in a drawing of circa 1652 (Kunsthalle, Hamburg).