Avarice: an old man counting money

Details

Attributed to Adriaen Brouwer (?Oudenaarde 1605/ 6-1638 Antwerp)
Avarice: an old man counting money
oil on panel
9 ¼ x 6 ½ in. (23.5 x 16.5 cm.)

Provenance

Thomas Jefferson Bryan (1800-1870), by whom donated in 1867 to
The New York Historical Society; Parke Bernet, New York, 2 December 1971, lot 57, as Joos van Craesbeeck.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 14 March 1980, lot 55, as Joos van Craesbeeck, where acquired by the following.
with Leonard and David Koetser Galerie, Geneva, until 4 October 1980.
Anonymous sale; Christie’s, New York, 3 June 1987, lot 18, as Joos van Craesbeeck.
Private collection, California.

Literature

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, III, London, 1910, pp. 654-55, no. 217, as Adriaen Brouwer.
Catalogue of the gallery of art of the New York Historical Society, New York, 1915, no. B-99, as Adriaen Brouwer.
K. de Clippel, 'Adriaen Brouwer, Portrait Painter: New Identifications and an Iconographic Novelty,' Simiolus, 30, 2003, pp. 206 and 208, n. 46, as possibly by Adriean Brouwer.
K. de Clippel, Joos van Craesbeeck (1605/06 – ca. 1660): Een Brabants Genreschilder, Belgium, 2006, pp. 288-89, no. C3.4, under rejected attributions, as attributed to Adriaen Brouwer.

Lot Essay

This painting is believed to be the prime version of a composition known in at least ten other versions. While it has been sold at auction in the past as by Joos van Craesbeeck, it has always been published as a work by Adriaen Brouwer. In her recent monograph on van Craesbeeck, Karolien de Clippel writes “The loose brushwork, the transparent painting style, the subtle effects of light and the coloring point, I believe, much more in the direction of Adriaen Brouwer than of Joos van Craesbeeck” (loc. cit.). De Clippel has suggested our painting may have been part of a series of the Seven Deadly Sins by Brouwer, of which the only other surviving original, representing Lust and having identical dimensions to our painting, is in the Mauritshuis. The other five Sins are known through copies.

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