Lot 133: Adam de Coster , Mechelen 1585/6 - 1643 Antwerp Mercenary love oil on canvas

oil on canvas

measurements note 123.1 by 99.8 cm.; 48 1/2 by 39 1/4 in.

London, Robilant and Voena, Dutch and Flemish Caravaggesque Paintings from the Koelliker Collection, 2005.

B. Nicolson, "Candlelight Pictures from the South Netherlands", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CVIII, no. 758, May 1966, p. 253, reproduced fig. 52;
B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford 1979, pp. 44, 252;
B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, vol. I, Oxford 1979, p. 101, reproduced vol. III, fig. 1598;
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Annual Report, 1995/1996/ 1997, p. 35;
J. Bikker in The International Caravaggesque Movement. French, Dutch and Flemish Caravaggesque Paintings from the Koelliker Collection, exhibition catalogue, London 2005, p. 34, reproduced p. 35.

Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 17-20 March 1964, lot 25; Miklos Rozsa, Los Angeles;
By whose estate gifted to Los Angeles County Museum, 1995;
Their sale, New York, Sotheby's, 29 May 2003, lot 30, where acquired by the present owner.

PROPERTY FROM THE LONDON RESIDENCE OF LUIGI KOELLIKER
Adam de Coster was a celebrated tenebrist painter in Antwerp in the first half of the 17υth century, although his reputation waned considerably after his death, with his works for a long time being confused with those of Honthorst and Triomphe Bigot. His fame was such during his lifetime that he was included in Sir Anthony van Dyck's Iconographia (which must be dated to the mid 1630s). He is illustrated with the moniker "Pictor Noctium" on Pieter de Jode's engraving after Van Dyck's grisaille portrait in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch.

The lack of a signed work means that all attributions to him are based on an engraving by Lucas Vorsterman after a lost original composition. From this, in his Burlington Magazine articles of 1961 and 1966υ1, Nicolson provides a convincing argument for a small corpus of works which can be firmly attributed to De Coster. After the present picture's appearance at auction in Vienna in 1964 it was first published by Nicolson where he compares the "dazzling effect of the candle"υ2 in the present picture to Two Men with Statuettes in the Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen as well as to a similar device in the L. Vorsterman engraving, and wholly supports a full attribution to the artist. 1. B. Nicolson, under Literature, 1966, pp. 253-254 and B. Nicolson, 1961, pp. 185-189.
2. B. Nicolson, ibid, 1966, p. 253