Adriaen van Ostade

Probably Anthony Meynts, Amsterdam;
His sale, Amsterdam, de Vries, July 15, 1823, lot 96, to van den Berg (as Isaac van Ostade);
Dr. and Mrs. Richard F. Brown, Santa Monica (as Isaac van Ostade);
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Richard F. Brown to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1961 (acc. no. M.61.42; as Isaac van Ostade until 1970 and henceforward as Adrian van Ostade).

C. Hofstede de Groot, Catalogue of the Dutch Painters, vol. IIII, London 1913, pp. 505-6, cat. no. 212 (as Isaac van Ostade);
P. Sutton, Dutch Art in America, Grand Rapids and Kampen 1986, pp. 133 and 334 (as Adriaen van Ostade);
S. Schaefer, et al, European Painting and Sculpture in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles 1987, p. 74, reproduced (as Adriaen van Ostade).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been quite recently restored and could be hung in its current condition. The panel on which it is painted is a single piece of oak which is un-broken and bears no reinforcements on the reverse.The paint layer is clean and varnished. Despite the fact that there are many fickle areas to this kind of paint layer and these panels often give way to a little graininess or texture to the paint layer, there appear to be no negative effects of time on this panel at all. There are hardly any retouches of note to the picture itself, which is a commendation. There are very slight thin spots here and there in the darker colors which could be slightly suppressed with a light glaze. However, overall the painting is in very good condition and could be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This charming panel, in which a middle-aged man is seen playing the shawm¹ at the door to the ram-shackle cottage of an elderly couple, while a young boy beats a drum beside him, was painted by Adriaen van Ostade during his most prolific decade, the 1640s. When the painting entered the collection of the present owner in 1961, the painting was erroneously (and somewhat inexplicably, given the clear signature) attributed to Adriaen's brother Isaak van Ostade and indeed remained as such until Horst Gerson saw the painting in 1970.² In all subsequent literature the painting has been correctly published as the work of Adriaen.

By 1642 Ostade had left behind the peasant brawls in barn interiors that dominated his oeuvre in the 1630s and that were inspired to a large degree by those of his master Adriaen Brouwer. His first open-air genre scene, so to speak, is probably the 1637 dated work Slaughtering Pigs by Lanternlight (Frankfurt, Städel)³ but it was not until c. 1639-40 that Ostade truly began to concentrate on landscape settings for his genre scenes. His first village landscape with genre figures, of which the present work is one, is the 1640 Peasant dance outside an Inn formerly in the Wesendonck collection⁴ and it was such works, more than any other, that were most coveted by contemporary collectors (and still are to this day), and that ensured Ostade's continued success through the ensuing decades.

1. A member of the woodwind family made in Europe from the 13^th to the 17^th century. It is the predecessor of the modern oboe.
2. Verbal communication with LACMA.
3. M. Neumeister, Holländische Gemälde im Städel 1550-1800, vol. I, Frankfurt 2005, p. 325, reproduced fig. 307.
4. See W. Drost, Barockmalerei in den germanischen Ländern, Wildpark-Potsdam 1926, reproduced plate xi.