Jan Miense Molenaer

Haarlem 1610 - 1668

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A Boy Holding a Tankard and Pipe.

Oil on Panel, 52 x 43.2 cm
Signed on barrel: I MOLENAER

ENQUIRES

Provenance

Private Collection, England (“ a titled gentleman ”);
His sale, Sotheby’s, Amsterdam, May 9, 1995, lot 55;
David Koetser Gallery, Zurich, exhibited at TEFAF, Maastricht 1996, and where acquired by;
Private Collection, Virginia, 1996 until the present time.

Literature

Dennis P. Weller, “Boy Holding a Tankard and Pipe” in Jan Miense Molenaer, Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, North Carolina Museum of Art, 2002, pp. 62 -65, no. 1, illustrated in colour.

Exhibition

Raleigh, North Carolina, North Carolina Museum of Art, Jan Miense Molenaer, Painter of the Dutch Golden Age, October 13 – December 29, 2002.

Additionnal Information

Undated but fully signed, Boy Holding a Tankard and Pipe can be counted among Molenaer’s earliest pictures. The subject is one the painter turned to often during the first decade of his career. Its composition, in which a full-length figure occupies a simple domestic interior, was also an early favorite. Although the painter clearly was responding to a larger Haarlem tradition then in vogue, he nevertheless imparted qualities upon this wayward youth that set his art apart from that of his colleagues. [1] The promise shown in this youthful picture would soon be realized, as Molenaer quickly crafted a unique and innovative artistic personality in the years to follow.