Lot 14: THE PROPERTY OF A LADY JAN DE BRAY HAARLEM CIRCA 1627 - 1697 THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

indistinctlly signed and possibly dated lower right to the right of the kneeling kings' crown

oil on oak panel, unframed

PROVENANCE

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, De Winter & Yver, 8 September 1773, lot 34 (apparently as Salomon de Bray), to J. van der Hoogt (according to Hofstede de Groot, cited by Von Moltke under Literature);
Possibly anonymous sale, Amsterdam, 1 October 1778, Ploos v. A... & Yver, lot 35 (as Salomon de Bray), to Delfos for 25 Guilders;
Johannes van Bergen van der Gryp, Malucca and Leiden;
His deceased sale, Soeterwoude, A. Delfos, 25 June 1784, lot 12 (as Jacob de Bray), unsold at 25 Guilders;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 29 November 1946, lot 137 (as G. van den Eeckhout), to Agnew's;
With Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., London, 1949, from whom acquired by John Vaughan-Morgan, later Lord Reigate;
Thence by family descent.
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Probably J.W. von Moltke, "Salomon de Bray", in Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, vols. 11-12, 1938-9, p. 382, no. 34 (recording the 1773 sale; as Salomon de Bray);
J.W. von Moltke, "Jan de Bray", in Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, vols. 11-12. 1938-9, p. 466, no. 14 (recording the Van Bergen van der Gryp sale; as Jan de Bray);
A. van Suchtelen, "De aanbidding der herders door J. de Bray", in Mauritshuis in Focus, vol. 10, 1997, pp. 14-16, also footnote 4;
J. Giltaij, in Dutch Classicism in seventeenth-century painting, exhibition catalogue, Rotterdam 1999, p. 303, under cat. no. 59, reproduced fig. 59b (as whereabouts unknown).
CATALOGUE NOTE

This picture is recorded as dated 1658. Jan de Bray made a finished drawn copy after it, as was his customary practice, which is in a New York private colection (see fig. 1; also reproduced in Giltaij, under Literature, fig. 59a). The drawing is dated (below the feet of the Virgin) 1658, confirming the traditional dating of the painting, and is signed and dated 1659 1/4 (=4th January) on the verso, which, again according to his usual practice, is the date when De Bray drew his copy (see Van Suchtelen, under Literature, p. 14).

On several occasions De Bray used his drawn copies as the basis for painted adaptations of his own compositions, sometimes painted over a decade later. He used the drawing after the present picture for a much larger painting on canvas (141 by 159 cm.), in Bamberg, Historisches Museum, which is dated 1672; reproduced in colour in Blankert, under Literature, no. 59). In this later work he concentrates on the figures occupying the central part of the composition, omitting the upper, lower and right-hand parts.

Paintings by Salomon de Bray and his son Jan have often been confused in the literature, including in recent times. The confusion often originates in descriptions in old sale catalogues: for example the present picture appears to be the one sold as Salomon de Bray in 1773, and can be identified with greater certainty as the one sold as by 'Jacob de Bray', dated 1658, in the Van Bergen van der Gryp sale in 1784. Von Moltke therefore listed what was probably the same picture in his catalogue raisonnés of both artists.

The present picture was sold at Christie's in 1946 with an attribution to Gerbrand van den Eeckhout. A photograph taken then kept at the R.K.D in The Hague records subsequent attributions: to Jan de Bray made by Horst Gerson; and to Salomon de Bray by Albert Blankert. The confusion was only finally resolved when the connection between the painting and Jan de Bray's signed drawing was published by Ariane van Suchtelen in 1997.

71 by 55 cm.; 28 by 21 3/4 in.