Velde, Esaias van de Esaias van de Velde, attributed... Lot 14

Velde, Esaias van de Esaias van de Velde, attributed to 1587 Amsterdam - 1630 The Hague Merry Company in the Open Air Oil on panel. 13 x 16.5 cm. Monogrammed and dated lower left: E.V.V. 1621. Provenance With Gallery F. Pallamar, Vienna (1975); With Alan Jacobs Gallery, London (1976). Exhibitions Holländische Malerei aus Berliner Privatbesitz, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, 1984, no. 75. Literature Jan Kelch: Holländische Malerei aus Berliner Privatbesitz, exhib. cat., Berlin 1984, pp. 152-3, no. 75, reproduced; George S. Keyes: Esaias van den Velde 1587-1630, Doornspijk 1984, p. 187, no. attr. 10; Uta Bendix, in: Ekkehard Mai (ed.): Das Kabinett des Sammlers, Cologne 1993, pp. 259-61, no. 102, reproduced. Esaias van de Velde was one of the most innovative artists of the Dutch Golden Age. In the first quarter of the 17th century, he paved the way for the realistic conception of landscape in Dutch painting and created influential prototypes for dune and river landscapes which inspired many Dutch artists, including his most famous pupil, Jan van Goyen. Van de Velde also set the stage for important developments in the field of genre painting, such as the introduction of the so-called vrolijke gezelschap, for which he was of decisive importance alongside Willem Buytewech. The first of these Merry Company pictures were painted in Haarlem in around 1615. They depicted figures in contemporary dress enjoying themselves with food and drink, music and dance, or playing cards. The importance of the erotic undertones in these paintings, revealed in the depiction of couples and their more or less successful courtship scenes, can hardly be overestimated. Such depictions were therefore usually