LOT 19
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JAN LIEVENS (LEIDEN 1607-1674 AMSTERDAM) A man holding a woman in partial undress
作品估价：GBP 1,500,000 - 2,000,000
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成交状态：未知
买家佣金拍卖企业在落槌价的基础上收取买家佣金
26%
图录号：
19
拍品名称：
JAN LIEVENS (LEIDEN 1607-1674 AMSTERDAM) A man holding a woman in partial undress
拍品描述：
JAN LIEVENS (LEIDEN 1607-1674 AMSTERDAM)
A man holding a woman in partial undress
oil on canvas
39 x 33 7/8 in. (99 x 85.8 cm.)Duke of Arenberg, Brussels.
Anonymous sale; Galerie Georges Giroux, Brussels, 20-21 March 1936, lot 93, as 'Ecole flamande XVII' (400 francs).
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, Amsterdam, 6 May 1998, lot 120, when acquired by the present owner.B. Schnackenburg, ‘Young Rembrandt’s “Rough Manner”: A Painting Style and its Sources’, The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt, exhibition catalogue, Kassel and Amsterdam, 2001-02, p. 103.
R. van Straten, Rembrandts Leidse tijd 1606-1632, Leiden, 2005, p. 28.
B. Schnackenburg, ‘Jan Lievens und Pieter de Grebber’, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, LXVIII, 2007, p. 188.
B. Schnackenburg, Jan Lievens: Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt, Petersberg, 2016, pp. 31-3, 45, 48, 58-9, 182-3, no. 19, illustrated.Washington, National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee Art Museum; and Amsterdam, Rembrandthuis, Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, 26 October 2008-9 August 2009, no. 12 (catalogue entry by A.K. Wheelock).Variously described in the recent literature as ‘a daring high point in Jan Lievens’s early oeuvre’ (Schnackenburg,
op. cit., p. 182) and a ‘vividly…evocative image’ that expresses ‘the sheer pleasure of a physical embrace’ (Wheelock, in exhibition catalogue, Washington, Milwaukee and Amsterdam, 2008-09, p. 104), this vibrant painting dates to a critical phase in the young artist’s development and a period when he was closely associated with Rembrandt. When the painting featured in the 2008-2009 monographic exhibition, it was dated by Arthur Wheelock to
circa 1627-8 (
loc. cit.), while Schnackenburg subsequently favoured a somewhat earlier dating of
circa 1625-6 (
loc. cit.).
Paintings like this must have especially dazzled Constantijn Huygens, the secretary to Prince Frederik Hendrik. Huygens eloquently conveyed his esteem for ‘a pair of young and noble painters [Lievens and Rembrandt] from Leiden’ in his 1630 autobiography, proclaiming that he would be ‘underestimating the merits of these two’ if he were ‘to say that they were the only ones who can vie with the absolute geniuses among the aforesaid prodigies [Goltzius, Rubens, de Gheyn and van Mierevelt]’ (quoted in C. Vogelaar, ed.,
Rembrandt and Lievens in Leiden, exhibition catalogue, Leiden, 1991, p. 132). But Huygens was equally keen to distinguish between the strengths of the two young painters. Of Lievens, he noted:
'Lievens is the greater in inventiveness and audacious themes and forms. Everything his young spirit endeavours to capture must be magnificent and lofty. Rather than depicting his subject in its true size, he chooses a larger scale' (
loc. cit.).
Rembrandt instead devoted ‘all his loving concentration to a small painting, achieving on that modest scale a result which one would seek in vain in the largest pieces of others' (
loc. cit.). The over-life-sized figures seen here as well as the painting’s overt theatricality – aided by the inclusion of the curtain enveloping the couple – bear testament to Huygens’s early description of Lievens as a highly inventive, often audacious prodigy: he was scarcely older than a teenager.
In both its erotically charged subject and tight framing of the figures who appear as if they project into the viewer’s space, Lievens’s painting finds numerous parallels with the sorts of images that were popular amongst the Utrecht Caravaggisti in the first half of the 1620s. One need look no further than Gerrit van Honthorst’s
Young girl and a young man of
circa 1622 in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, to find a similarly overt expression of carnal pleasure (fig. 1). Similarly, Schnackenburg (
op. cit.) has pointed to the influence of the robust sensuality expressed in prints like Jan Saenredam’s
Allegory of Touch after a design by Hendrick Goltzius (fig. 2).
What most distinguishes this painting from much of Lievens’s earlier work is its skilful use of a brightly coloured palette, evinced most clearly in the brilliant play of blue and white in the man’s drapery, and the fluidity of brushwork that aims ‘for a maximum, even provocative erotic impact’ (Schnackenburg,
op. cit.) when compared against slightly earlier paintings like the
Allegory of the Five Senses (fig. 3). The painting’s alluring subject may account for its altered state following its reemergence on the market in 1998. It had been enlarged along its top and right edges, and the woman’s breasts were rendered more modest by an overpainted veil of translucent fabric. These additions and overpaint were removed in preparation for the painting’s exhibition in 2008-09, at which time it was also discovered that the canvas had been trimmed along the left and, to a lesser degree, right edges, thereby somewhat reducing the effect of the theatrical curtain. In his entry for the exhibition catalogue, Wheelock (
op. cit.) posited that the painting may have originally functioned as an overdoor to be seen from below. The position of the woman’s outstretched right hand and the direction of her gaze would indeed seem to support such a conclusion.
Intriguingly, the young man’s features bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the young Rembrandt, suggesting he may have modelled for Lievens. A similar carefree attitude can be seen in Rembrandt’s laughing self-portrait of
circa 1628, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (fig. 4). Rembrandt and Lievens served as models for one another on a number of occasions. Rembrandt, for example, probably also sat for Lievens’s contemporaneous
Lute player (Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum), while Lievens likely appears in several of Rembrandt’s early paintings, including the youthful man visible in the backgrounds of Rembrandt’s
Allegory of Hearing of
circa 1624-5 (New York, The Leiden Collection) and his
Musical company of 1626 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).
A man holding a woman in partial undress
oil on canvas
39 x 33 7/8 in. (99 x 85.8 cm.)Duke of Arenberg, Brussels.
Anonymous sale; Galerie Georges Giroux, Brussels, 20-21 March 1936, lot 93, as 'Ecole flamande XVII' (400 francs).
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, Amsterdam, 6 May 1998, lot 120, when acquired by the present owner.B. Schnackenburg, ‘Young Rembrandt’s “Rough Manner”: A Painting Style and its Sources’, The Mystery of the Young Rembrandt, exhibition catalogue, Kassel and Amsterdam, 2001-02, p. 103.
R. van Straten, Rembrandts Leidse tijd 1606-1632, Leiden, 2005, p. 28.
B. Schnackenburg, ‘Jan Lievens und Pieter de Grebber’, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, LXVIII, 2007, p. 188.
B. Schnackenburg, Jan Lievens: Friend and Rival of the Young Rembrandt, Petersberg, 2016, pp. 31-3, 45, 48, 58-9, 182-3, no. 19, illustrated.Washington, National Gallery of Art; Milwaukee Art Museum; and Amsterdam, Rembrandthuis, Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, 26 October 2008-9 August 2009, no. 12 (catalogue entry by A.K. Wheelock).Variously described in the recent literature as ‘a daring high point in Jan Lievens’s early oeuvre’ (Schnackenburg,
op. cit., p. 182) and a ‘vividly…evocative image’ that expresses ‘the sheer pleasure of a physical embrace’ (Wheelock, in exhibition catalogue, Washington, Milwaukee and Amsterdam, 2008-09, p. 104), this vibrant painting dates to a critical phase in the young artist’s development and a period when he was closely associated with Rembrandt. When the painting featured in the 2008-2009 monographic exhibition, it was dated by Arthur Wheelock to
circa 1627-8 (
loc. cit.), while Schnackenburg subsequently favoured a somewhat earlier dating of
circa 1625-6 (
loc. cit.).
Paintings like this must have especially dazzled Constantijn Huygens, the secretary to Prince Frederik Hendrik. Huygens eloquently conveyed his esteem for ‘a pair of young and noble painters [Lievens and Rembrandt] from Leiden’ in his 1630 autobiography, proclaiming that he would be ‘underestimating the merits of these two’ if he were ‘to say that they were the only ones who can vie with the absolute geniuses among the aforesaid prodigies [Goltzius, Rubens, de Gheyn and van Mierevelt]’ (quoted in C. Vogelaar, ed.,
Rembrandt and Lievens in Leiden, exhibition catalogue, Leiden, 1991, p. 132). But Huygens was equally keen to distinguish between the strengths of the two young painters. Of Lievens, he noted:
'Lievens is the greater in inventiveness and audacious themes and forms. Everything his young spirit endeavours to capture must be magnificent and lofty. Rather than depicting his subject in its true size, he chooses a larger scale' (
loc. cit.).
Rembrandt instead devoted ‘all his loving concentration to a small painting, achieving on that modest scale a result which one would seek in vain in the largest pieces of others' (
loc. cit.). The over-life-sized figures seen here as well as the painting’s overt theatricality – aided by the inclusion of the curtain enveloping the couple – bear testament to Huygens’s early description of Lievens as a highly inventive, often audacious prodigy: he was scarcely older than a teenager.
In both its erotically charged subject and tight framing of the figures who appear as if they project into the viewer’s space, Lievens’s painting finds numerous parallels with the sorts of images that were popular amongst the Utrecht Caravaggisti in the first half of the 1620s. One need look no further than Gerrit van Honthorst’s
Young girl and a young man of
circa 1622 in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, to find a similarly overt expression of carnal pleasure (fig. 1). Similarly, Schnackenburg (
op. cit.) has pointed to the influence of the robust sensuality expressed in prints like Jan Saenredam’s
Allegory of Touch after a design by Hendrick Goltzius (fig. 2).
What most distinguishes this painting from much of Lievens’s earlier work is its skilful use of a brightly coloured palette, evinced most clearly in the brilliant play of blue and white in the man’s drapery, and the fluidity of brushwork that aims ‘for a maximum, even provocative erotic impact’ (Schnackenburg,
op. cit.) when compared against slightly earlier paintings like the
Allegory of the Five Senses (fig. 3). The painting’s alluring subject may account for its altered state following its reemergence on the market in 1998. It had been enlarged along its top and right edges, and the woman’s breasts were rendered more modest by an overpainted veil of translucent fabric. These additions and overpaint were removed in preparation for the painting’s exhibition in 2008-09, at which time it was also discovered that the canvas had been trimmed along the left and, to a lesser degree, right edges, thereby somewhat reducing the effect of the theatrical curtain. In his entry for the exhibition catalogue, Wheelock (
op. cit.) posited that the painting may have originally functioned as an overdoor to be seen from below. The position of the woman’s outstretched right hand and the direction of her gaze would indeed seem to support such a conclusion.
Intriguingly, the young man’s features bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the young Rembrandt, suggesting he may have modelled for Lievens. A similar carefree attitude can be seen in Rembrandt’s laughing self-portrait of
circa 1628, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (fig. 4). Rembrandt and Lievens served as models for one another on a number of occasions. Rembrandt, for example, probably also sat for Lievens’s contemporaneous
Lute player (Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum), while Lievens likely appears in several of Rembrandt’s early paintings, including the youthful man visible in the backgrounds of Rembrandt’s
Allegory of Hearing of
circa 1624-5 (New York, The Leiden Collection) and his
Musical company of 1626 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).