Lot 252: Adriaenus van Oolen active Amsterdam, d. 1694

Adriaenus van Oolen active Amsterdam, d. 1694
A hen and chicks, with a pigeon, in a landscape
signed 'Adriaenus van Oolen' (lower center)
oil on canvas
35 x 29½ in. 88.8 x 75 cm.

Reverend Theodore Pitcairn, Philadelphia, acquired in Amsterdam in the 1950s and thence by descent to the present owners.

Property of David Bruce Duncan and Deana Pitcairn Duncan

This painting once belonged to a collection formed by the Reverend Theodore Pitcairn, of Byrn Athyn, Pennsylvania, the son of John Pitcairn (1841-1916), a founding director of the enormously successful Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. Like his father, the Reverend Theodore was deeply involved in the religious community of Swedenborgianism in his local area. However, in artistic circles, he is most famous for having owned of Monet's La Terrasse à Sainte-Adresse, which he sold at Christie's in London in 1967. Purchased by Rev. Pitcairn and his wife for $11,000 in 1926 from a New York gallery, the Monet sold for a world record 560,000 guineas ($1,411,200) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When explaining his purchase of the painting to Mr. Peter Chance, Chairman of Christie's, in 1967, he mentioned that he was not considering it as an investment piece: 'We were both struck by its cheerful quality and thought that this was the type of picture which would always give us a lift. At the time some people thought me rather odd. In those years Monet wasn't too well known here' (fig. 1).