Lot 95: Joseph van Aken (?Antwerp c. 1699-1749 London)

A merry company drinking and smoking in an interior
oil on canvas
25 x 31 5/8 in. (64.2 x 80.3 cm.)

Thomas J. Bryan, New York, by whom bequeathed in 1870 to
The New York Historical Society, 1870; sale, Parke Bernet, New York, 2 December 1971, lot 138.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 14 November 1990, lot 60.

Van Aken began his career in Antwerp as a genre painter in the Flemish tradition, before travelling to London in circa 1720, where he continued to produce genre paintings as well as conversation pieces (see R. Edwards, 'The Conversation Pictures of Joseph van Aken', Apollo, xxii, 1936, pp. 79-85). In the 1730s and 1740s van Aken abandoned independent work, taking up employment as a drapery painter for other artists, most notably Allan Ramsay, Joseph Highmore, Thomas Hudson and George Knapton. Van Aken's skill was such that several artists may be said to have made their reputations on his work - to the degree that Horace Walpole quipped that: 'Almost every painter's works were painted by van Aken' (see also J. Steegman, 'A Drapery Painter of the 18th Century', Connoisseur, xcvii, 1936, pp. 309-15; and E. Einberg, ed., catalogue of the exhibition, Manners and Morals: Hogarth and British Painting, 1700-1760 London, Tate Gallery, 1987).

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