Lot n° 197
Estimation :
15000 - 20000
EUR
Entourage de Peter Thijs I (Anvers 1624 - 1677 Anvers) - Lot 197
Entourage de Peter Thijs I (Anvers 1624 - 1677 Anvers)
Portrait of two girls and two boys playing with a goat, circa 1650
Oil on canvas_x001e_ 182.5 x 240 cm._x001e_
Full-length, cartouche attached to frame:
Adriaen van der Werff_x001c_
Our monumental painting of playful siblings is a remarkable example of the great fashion for children's portraits that developed among the patrician families of the northern and southern Netherlands in the early 17th century.x001e_
The particularly large number of children's paintings produced in these two centers of creativity should be seen in the broader context of the development of portrait painting in the 16th and 17th centuries, but may have led some to write that children held a very special place, to the extent that the United Provinces were presented as a veritable "_x001e_Republic of children_x001e_"._x001e_
This fashion was one of the first collective demonstrations of parental love in European art, and developed during the first decades of the 17th century, reaching its peak in the 1630s-1660s, particularly in Antwerp, where a group of painters specialized in this theme was formed._x001e_
In these years, the genre declined in the Northern Netherlands, due to economic recession and the influence of the Counter-Reformation, which imposed a new iconographic canon - the representation of the child in the guise of its patron saint.x001e_
Aware of the low life expectancy of their children (40 to 45% of children died before the age of five in the
United Provinces in the 17th century), parents hurried to have their children's portraits made. Half of the child portraits painted in the 17th century, for which the age of the subjects is known, were painted within the first twelve months of birth.x001e_
Our portrait seems to represent a sibling with perfect parity: two girls and two boys.x001e_
In keeping with the 17th-century taste for pastoral literature, the children in our portrait appear as shepherds and shepherdesses, in brightly colored garments, posing in the idyllic landscape of Arcadia, with a goat that looks like it escaped from a Bacchanal.x001_
Deeply rooted in the social reality of the time, at least that of patrician families, our portrait is a remarkable source for illustrating the pride of a generation of parents in their offspring._x001e_
Documentary sources:_x001e_
Pride and Joy. Children's portraits in the Netherlands (1500-1700), cat. exp. Gent, Amsterdam, Ludion Press, 2001_x001e_
Comparative illustrations:
- Christoffel Pierson (1631-1714)_x001e_Two brothers and a goat, oil on canvas, 100 x 145 cm. Private collection, current location unknown, Boetto sale, July 7, 2020, lot 260._x001e_
- Bernardus Zwaendecron (1570-1629),_x001e_Two children as shepherds,_x001e_oil on canvas, 143 x 158 cm, The Hague, Maurithuis, inv.
675.
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