Lot 68: Jacob De Wit (Amsterdam 1695-1754)

A Bacchanale
oil on canvas
184 x 123.5 cm. (72 1/2 x 48 5/8 in.)

PROVENANCE:
Acquired by the present owner's family in the mid-19th century and thence by family descent

The present composition relates very closely to a painting from the Gerhardt-Budapest Collection, which was sold at Lepke's, Berlin on the 10th November, 1911, lot 100. The latter painting, which was oil on canvas and measured 150 x 120 cm., was mistakenly described as by Jan de Wit, being indistinctly signed. Since the latter painting depicts a rural scene with harvesters in the foreground and reapers beyond it is likely that the two pictures represented Autumn and Summer respectively and formed half a series of the Four Seasons. Such large-scale polychromatic works by Jacob de Wit are less known than his more prolific grisailles of predominantly putti, but were popular among those wealthy merchants of Amsterdam who wished to have the interiors of their town houses decorated in the latest taste. Similar examples can be found in the Bisschoplijk Museum, Haarlem (dated 1749; inv. no. BMH 1126) and in the Theater-Museum, Amsterdam (dated 1734, a collaboration with Isaac de Moucheron, who painted the landscape).

A related drawing in sanguine and black chalk by Jacob de Wit of the Head of Bacchus is in the collection of the Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (Invent., Gen. 739). See fig. 1.