Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem

Abraham van der Voort, Amsterdam, by 1620;¹
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, De Winter-Yver, July 15, 1772, lot 30, to Yver;
With Jean Yver, Amsterdam (active 1770-1777);
By whom sold, Amserdam, Schley, 13 December 1802, lot 84, to Johannes Arnoldus;
Presumably anonymous sale, Amsterdam, 16 October 1815, lot 38, for 53 guilders, to Adriaan de Lelie;²
S.M. de Boer;
His sale, Amsterdam, 15 April 1840, lot 17, for 33 guilders, to Esser;
Merlo collection, Cologne, circa 1890;
Von Liphart collection, Ratshof near Dorpat, 1899;
Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Lady"), London, Christie's, 12 December 1986, lot 5, for £18,000;
With Stanley Moss, Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York;
Anonymous sale, New York, Christie’s, 10 January 1990, lot 177.

N. von Holst, “Über Einige Kunstwerke in Baltendeutschem Privatbesitz” in Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 12/13 1943, pp. 320 and 336
P.J.J. van Thiel, Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem 1562-1638, A Monograph and Catalogue Raisonné, Ghent 1999, pp. 136 and 380, cat. no. 224, reproduced plate XXVIII.

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 work has not been recently restored. The panel has been cradled. Quite strong cracking in the wood is now visible across the chest of the female figure and through the hand of the male figure on the left. There is a good deal of retouching across the bottom quarter of the picture, where the panel and paint layer had become unstable in the past. The condition is considerably better within the remainder of the work, although some thinness is apparent in the glazes of the faces and some of the original pigment in the head of the man is slightly raised.
"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."

The theme of unequal lovers has a long literary history, but in the visual arts it most often appeared in prints, usually accompanied by a moralizing inscription.  The theme took two different forms, that of an old woman soliciting a handsome young man, and, more commonly, an old man soliciting a pretty young woman.  Here Cornelis van Haarlem indicates the difference in ages quite subtly, adding a little grey to the man's beard.  The artist focuses instead on the mercenary aspects of the transaction, indicating the man's wealth by the fur on his cloak, the gold medal on his hat and, most obviously, by the  bulging money bag that the woman squeezes suggestively.

Cornelis made several paintings of Unequal Lovers, including an interesting variant with a third figure – a young man allied with the woman – one of which was sold in these Rooms on 31 January 2013, lot 5, for $340,000.  All show large figures, usually in half-length set against a nearly empty background. It was a format he used for many of his genre subjects to bring the viewer closer to the scene.

1.  For further information on the provenance, including transcriptions of the Dutch notes and an English translation, see Literature, Van Thiel, p. 380.
2.  The consignor of the lot is identified as "Munk" in the copy of the auction catalogue in the Kunstbibliothek der Staatlichen Museen, Berlin, Germany.  Van Thiel, op. cit., felt the description in the catalogue was too brief to be certain that the picture is identical with the present work.