The Art History Mystery Challenge No. 15 - Egbert van der Poel - The Fair

The Art History Mystery Challenge

Welcome to our totally disorganized art museum! The challenge is to help us identify all the masterworks in our virtual museum. We'll post a piece of the painting and one clue to get you started. Can you name the artist and the title of the painting?

Pieces of the painting and clues to the artist's identity will be added every 24 hours until we have a winner, then the next painting in our collection will be posted.  Feel free to use any resources at your disposal to help in your search.  Challenge winners will receive a shiny award badge that we will add below their profile image. You will retain this award until someone else wins the award.

The AHM Challenge is open to all forum members, not just ws oil painters, so join in and have some fun with us!

If you would like to host a AHM Challenge painting; please send a PM to the Challenge Moderator Callie to receive instructions and notice when to post your painting. Be prepared to check in frequently while hosting a challenge!



Clue = Nationality - Dutch

Clue = born in 1621

I feel as if I've just finished a very intense crash-course on Dutch Painting - still can't pass the final exam, though! Don't have any idea who this might be.

Just looking at the lists of Dutch painters from this time, it would seem there were very few adult males in Holland who were not artists! This is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But I have seen a lot of artists/paintings that I've never heard of before, and so many different styles; it certainly was the Golden Age of Dutch painting.

Your rite Callie this one is going to be challenging. I wish you all luck. The clue and extra piece of the puzzle on Monday may help for this one to narrow it down.

"The Fair" 1661 by Egbert van der Poel

To see a LARGE view of the painting:

http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer/z.html


Egbert van der POEL
Delft 1621 - Rotterdam 1664
Dutch painter, son of a Delft goldsmith. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the first twenty-nine years of his life, not even the name of his teacher. It has been assumed but cannot be said with certainty that he resided during 1648 in the coastal town of Scheveningen, outside The Hague. The first document to shed light on his life is his registration with the Guild of St Luke in Delft in October 17, 1650; he is listed as a landscape painter. A year later he married Aeltgen Willems van Linschooten in Maasluis, near Rotterdam. The couple were living on the Doelenstraat in Delft at the time of the gunpowder explosion on October 12, 1654, as one of their daughters was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk there on October 14. Whether she was a victim of the explosion is not known. The couple had three daughters who were baptized in Delft. The baptismal records of a son indicate that the artist was living on the Rotte next to the St Joris House in Rotterdam by November 1655. He died in Rotterdam nine years later.

from:
http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/poel.html

Good going Callie! That was one that was really difficult. You retain the award. Thank you for the info.

If I hadn't been looking for some examples for the March painting challenge, I might never have come across the painting.

What surprised me about this scene - the atmosphere seems rather gloomy, but when you look at the larger view, it seems to be a happy (drunken?) festive crowd. I wonder if the colors have changed much from when it was originally painted.

I could swear (or maybe I shouldn't) that I just saw that painting on the Antique Road Show on PBS and it was pretty valuable. I can't remember if it was a print (probably) or an original.

Judy

Wow - could you imagine discovering you had a valuable old masterwork just hanging around the house? I love it when someone buys a painting at a garage sale for a few bucks and then finds out it's worth thousands

I almost think it was an original. I remember the person saying her family was from Holland and this painting was handed down from generation to generation.

Judy

I found this in the Road Show archives:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/200901A06.html

It's the right time, but initials on the painting are FVO.