Offered by Antichità Castelbarco
Jacob Duck (Utrecht, 1600 - 1667) attributable
Merry company in an interior
Oil painting on canvas
63 x 51 cm./ In antique box frame 80 x 70 cm.
On the back of the old frame label XV international art exhibition of the city of Venice, 1926 (?)
The scene depicted belongs to a pictorial subject much appreciated in Flemish painting, called the 'Merry Companies', where a group of men and women often sumptuously dressed rejoiced in a festive atmosphere intent on playing, drinking and making music, that is, the most typical pastimes of the upper middle class.
In our case it is a wonderful work attributable to Jacob Duck (Utrecht, 1600 - 1667), master in the representation of scenes of everyday life, rendered with an incredible pictorial refinement, and capable of giving life to his characters, shaped by a game of masterful lights.
His painting style, as is clearly evident when observing this scene, is striking for its high level of theatricality, and is a unique blend of humor and sexual innuendo, traits that he later managed to impart to the next generation of Dutch genre painting.
We are in front of a festive gathering of young knights with their weapons placed on the floor, found themselves in a classic tavern of the time, where it was possible to enjoy the pleasures of life, playing 'tric-trac', a typical seventeenth-century Dutch board game , drinking, smoking and entertaining obliging ladies.
On the one hand it is a Dutch representation of middle-class entertainment habits in which drinking, smoking and gambling had become simple pastimes, but on the other hand it can be seen as a moral warning against the dangers of free time.
The festive air that transpires from the painting brings with it a certain moralistic subtext: it does not seem to simply celebrate the pleasures of socializing among wealthy young people, but actually shows a more dissolute morality, linked to drunkenness, vice and lust.
In each painting we find different figures, in our case the man spying from a window or two of the party participants looking towards us with a mocking smile, whose function is probably to warn the viewer to focus his attention about the details of the scene.
To support the attribution, a comparison with the painting ''Interior with triktrak players smoking and drinking'' from around 1650 (oil on canvas, 63 x 51), published in the RDK archive, inv. 47988 (Kunsthandel Moatti Fine Arts, Paris), different from ours due to tiny details.
Delevery information :
We take care of and organise the transport of the purchased works, both for Italy and abroad, through professional and insured carriers.
We take great care We personally take care of the packaging, to which we devote a great deal of care: each work is carefully packed, first with arti- cle material, then with a custom-made wooden box.
Should you have the desire to see this or other works in person, we would be happy to welcome you to our gallery in Riva del Garda, Viale Giuseppe Canella 18, we are always open by appointment only.
