Gerbrand van den Eeckhout

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 18 December 1987, lot 156 (as attributed to Gerbrand van den Eeckhout);

Private collection, North Germany;

Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 14 October 2008, lot 75 (as Gerbrand van den Eeckhout).

W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, Landau in der Pfalz 1983, vol. VI, pp. 3706 and 3859, cat. no. 2271, reproduced (as Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, executed circa 1653–55).

Though originally trained in Rembrandt's studio, by the time Eeckhout painted this work in circa 1653–55, he had moved away from his master's style, towards increasingly more elegant and refined genre scenes closer to those of Pieter de Hooch and Gerard Ter Borch. Van den Eeckhout was at the forefront of this movement, painting interiors comprised of fashionably attired figures, cavaliers and soldiers engaged in merrymaking and various past-times, such as music and card-playing. Although the influences of artists like Ter Borch and De Hooch are visible in such genre scenes as this, also on display is Van den Eeckhout’s distinctly individual style of rendering his compositions, details, and colours, as can be seen in the closely observed brickwork showing through the wall in the background of this painting. Guardroom interiors were a favourite theme of the artist: compare the signed and dated work from 1651 sold London, Christie's, in 1992 and the work sold in these Rooms in 2002.¹

In 2011 Professors Werner Sumowski and Volker Manuth endorsed the attribution to Eeckhout based on a photograph and after first-hand inspection of the original respectively. Professor Manuth will include the painting in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of van den Eeckhout's paintings.

¹ Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 15 April 1992, lot 22, for £340,000; Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 10 July 2002, lot 33, for £280,000.