Master Paintings Part II

Emanuel de Witte

Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft

Lot Closed

January 30, 05:06 PM GMT

Estimate

100,000 - 150,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Emanuel de Witte

Alkmaar circa 1616 - 1691/2 Amsterdam

Interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft

signed and dated lower right, on a grave: E DE WITTE/ A^o 1655

oil on canvas

canvas: 20 3/8 by 16 1/8 in.; 51.8 by 41 cm.

With Asscher & Koetser, London, by April 1922;
With W.E. Duits, London, 1922;
With J. Goudstikker, Amsterdam/ The Hague, 1923;
Siegfried Buchenau (1870-1932), Gut Niendorf, Lübeck;
Thence by descent in the family until after 2000 [according to Manke, in a private collection in Barcelona by 1963];
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2000.

E. Trautscholdt in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. U. Thieme, F. Becker, H.Vollmer, Leipzig 1947, vol. XXXVI, p. 125 (where painting now in Stockholm erroneously identified with the present canvas);
I. Manke, Emanuel de Witte. 1617 - 1692, Amsterdam 1963, p. 82, cat. no. 19a (as possible autograph version).

Bremen, 1931, cat. no. 27, no. 139.

The present signed and dated interior of the Oude Kerk is one of many depictions of this setting, The church, built in 1300, rarely appears the same way twice in De Witte’s oeuvre, and he often combined different views of the same church in one composition. Here, a man in a red coat reads the epitaph for Maria de By, which was not located exactly there, and beyond, in the side chapel is the tomb of Piet Hein, which should instead be in the main choir. These combinations are likely based on sketches from De Witte’s time in Delft throughout the 1640s. De Witte often used boldly dressed figures to draw the viewer into the composition, such as the man in red, and included playful vignettes and genre figures like the children playing on the church floor and the dogs. A copy of this composition with a few small differences and on panel is now in the Hallwyll collection, Stockholm.

By 1655, De Witte had relocated to Amsterdam and remarried to Lysbeth Lodewyck van de Plass after the death of his first wife. The couple had a daughter in 1656, but in 1658 Lysbeth was banished from Amsterdam for robbery and took the daughter with her. This began a series of personal and financial troubles that culminated in the artist’s apparent suicide in the winter of 1691-92, ending a productive career as an influential painter of church interiors.