Anton Goubau

The Golden Age of Flemish Painting, exh. cat., Taichung 1988, p. 133, reproduced in colour on p. 134.

Taichung, Taiwan Museum of Art, The Golden Age of Flemish Painting, 26 June – 23 September 1988.

Signed and dated 1669, this lively composition is characteristic of Anton Goubau's second Antwerp period, where he returned after spending the later 1640s in Rome. Two very comparable pictures, both of which feature obelisks at centre and similar fountains to that depicted in the present painting, have been dated towards the end of the 1660s or the early 1670s by Agnes Tieze.¹ One of these works sold in 2010 for £49,250.²

Schooled in Antwerp, Goubau left his native city at some point before 1642 to travel to Paris and Rome, where he settled as part of the second generation of bamboccianti who had ventured to the Eternal City from northern Europe in the 1640s. Upon his return to Antwerp, where he is recorded by 1650, he set up a successful workshop, which would run for some 40 years. He trained, amongst other artists, Nicolas de Largillière (1656–1746) and Jan Frans van Bloemen (1662–1749).

¹ A. Tieze, Anton Goubau (1616–1698), Stuttgart 2004, pp. 135–36, nos A31 and A32, reproduced figs A31 and A32.

² London, Christie's, 7 July 2010, lot 142, for £49,250; Anton Goubau (Antwerp 1616-1698) , A capriccio of a mediterranean port with Roman ruins | Christie's (christies.com).