Lot 48: DANIEL DE BLIECK (active 1648-1673 Middelburg)

A church interior by candlelight with figures conversing signed and dated 'D.D.blieck.1652' (lower left, on the base of the column) oil on panel 331/2 x 451/4 in. (85.1 x 114.9 cm.) PROVENANCE Anon. Sale, Christie's, London, 9 July 1982, lot 90. with Gebr. Douwes, Amsterdam, 1997. EXHIBITION Mainz, Guttenburg University, Werke Alter Meister, 1968, no. 5. NOTES Records of Daniel de Blieck's birthdate have been lost, but he may have been around 20 years old when he joined the painter's guild of Middelburg in 1647-48. His earliest known paintings date from the 1650s. Walter Liedtke notes that, despite his relative isolation in Zeeland, De Blieck was well aware of the latest developments in church painting taking place in Delft and Rotterdam in the early 1650s (W. Liedtke in the catalogue for the Otto Naumann Gallery, Inaugural Exhibition of Old Master Paintings, 1995, p. 95, no. 19). Liedtke records three paintings executed in the same year as the present work and notes the importance to De Blieck of the candlelight paintings of the Rotterdam artist, Anthonie de Lorme. The present work, which appears to be an imaginary rendering of a classical church interior, uses figures and groups from other compositions of around the same date, illustrating the artist's practice of drawing from sketchbook models. For instance, the prostrate stone-mason on the ground to the right of the composition appears in both De Blieck's Interior of the Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, of 1652 (Otto Naumann, New York, 1995) and in a composition offered for sale at Christie's, Amsterdam, 9 November 1998, lot 74. The group of figures around the ladder in the middle distance of the present work also appears with variations in the Naumann painting.