Lot 26: Louis Vallée (?-1653 Amsterdam)

Louis Vallée (?-1653 Amsterdam)
A family portrait of a an elderly woman with her son and grandson, three-quarter length, seated, on a palatial balcony
signed and dated 'Louis Vallee 1649.' (lower left)
oil on canvas
49½ x 59 7/8 in. (125.7 x 152.3 cm.)

The Duits Quarterly, vol. I, no. 4, 1964, pp. 14ff.

Col. R.V. Davidson, 1951.
W.G. Goldsmith, Salisbury House, St. Albans.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 19 April 1985, lot 100.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
Little is known about Louis Vallée and only a handful of pictures by him survive. Only two other signed paintings exist: a Portrait of a Man, dated 1651, last recorded in a sale in New York in 1935, and a Group portrait of three children, from 1652, (see A. Bredius, in Oud Holland, VIII, 1890, p. 297). This short period of activity between 1649 and 1652 suggests that the artist may have died prematurely, perhaps in the plague that swept through Amsterdam in the year of his death. He is recorded in the Amsterdam burial register as having lived on the Warmoestraat in the parish of the Oude Kerk. A fourth painting (unsigned) given to the artist was sold at Sotheby's, London, 4 December 2008, lot 138 (£55,250).