Lot 25

Portrait of the Golden Age: The Norman and Suzanne Hascoe Collection On the occasion of the landmark 2005 exhibition of their Old Master paintings, the great scholar of Dutch art, Peter C. Sutton, paid tribute to Norman and Suzanne Hascoe and to the extraordinary artworks they had assembled. Noting that their "remarkable collection" featured "an outstanding group of Dutch and Flemish pictures," Sutton pointed out that the Hascoes had spent more than twenty-five years indulging their distinctive, passionate and discerning tastes. Like other leading collectors of Dutch art in this country, the Hascoes also amassed an exceptional collection of Colonial American furniture, much of which was created by early Dutch settlers in New York and New Jersey, and as such provided an ideal complement to the paintings they bought to decorate the walls of their elegant home in Greenwich, Connecticut. While the collection includes a number of great masterworks - including the Hendrick ter Brugghen, Jacob van Ruisdael, Gerard ter Borch, and Frans Snyders in the present group - it is perhaps most remarkable for its thoroughness and diversity. A true "Portrait of the Golden Age", the collection includes examples of nearly every genre of Dutch painting from the 17th and 18th centuries: still-life, peasant scenes, allegories, satire, portraits, architectural fantasies, and history pictures are all represented. Christie's is proud to have been entrusted with this exceptional group of works, which testifies to the continued enthusiasm for the collecting of Dutch art in America. PROPERTY FROM THE HASCOE FAMILY COLLECTION

Dirck van Delen (Heusden, near 's-Hertogenbosch, 1604/5-1671 Arnemuiden)

The Pool at Bethesda

Details

Dirck van Delen (Heusden, near 's-Hertogenbosch, 1604/5-1671 Arnemuiden)
The Pool at Bethesda
signed and dated 'd v delen 1645' (lower right, on the base of the column)
oil on panel
20¾ x 17 1/8 in. (52.7 x 43.4 cm.)

Provenance

with Emmanuel Moatti, Paris, 1994, where acquired by the Hascoe family.

Exhibited

Greenwich, Bruce Museum, Old Master Paintings from the Hascoe Collection, 2 April-29 May 2005, no. 6 (catalogue by P. Sutton).

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Lot Essay

Dirck van Delen was among the most formidable architectural painters of the 17th-century Netherlands, so it is unsurprising that over the course of his career he chose to depict the Pool at Bethesda no less than three times. The Pool, described in John 5:2-4 as "having five porches," presents an inherent imaginative challenge, especially for an artist interested in architecture. According to the Gospel, the location was one of healing, where the Archangel Raphael - visible here at the top of the central archway stirring the waters - came to cure the blind and crippled. Timothy Trent Blade, who did not know the present work at the publication of his 1976 catalogue raisonné of Van Delen's paintings, has suggested that the artist's pictures of the Pool at Bethesda, due both to their subject and intimate scale, may have been commissioned for hospitals.

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