Abraham Willemsen

Abraham Willemsen (Antwerp circa 1610–1672) Landscape with mythological scene, presumably depicting the death of Eurydice, oil on copper, 69.8 x 87 cm, framed Verso, an adhesive strip with the coat-of-arms of the Marquis de Courtarvel de Pezé. A comparable signed painting by Willemsen, entitled “Minerva and the Muses on Mount Parnassus”, was auctioned by Christie’’’’s, London, on 29.3.1968 as lot 70. The landscape background of this painting has been tentatively attributed to the Antwerp painter, Gaspar de Witte (1624–1681). We are grateful to Fred Meijer of the RKD, The Hague, for his kind assistance in the cataloguing of this painting.

Abraham Willemsen (Antwerp 1627-1672), after Sir Peter Paul Rubens The reconciliation of Jacob and Esau oil on copper 26 x 34½ in. (66 x 87.6 cm.) Pre-Lot Text PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION Lot Notes This painting relates to Rubens' two versions of The Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh and Schloss Schleissheim, Munich). Willemsen has expanded the composition to include the group of soldiers at the left and the young cattle herder at the right. This painting is closer compositionally to the Schleissheim version, in which the woman at the lower right is similarly draped with a scarf and the camels are placed some distance apart. Willemsen's additions to the composition, together with the buildup of his brushwork, suggest that this painting was intended as a finished work. Copies of Rubens' oil sketches were in brisk demand by his contemporaries and appear in the stock lists of a number of prominent seventeenth century art dealers. Willemsen, Pieter van Lint, and Willem van Herp produced the majority of such copies for this lucrative branch of the Antwerp art market. Abraham Willemsen was born in Antwerp around 1610. In 1627 he became a pupil of the Antwerp painter Willem Antonissens and, in 1645, was elected dean of the city's Guild of St. Luke. He was recorded in Paris the same year. In addition to copies after Rubens, Willemsen painted decorative landscapes on copper, often animated with religious scenes, and genre scenes such as Interior of an Inn in Dunkerque (Musée des Beaux-Arts). His figures derived primarily from paintings by Rubens, Hendrick van Balen, and Gerard Seghers. Willemsen and his studio seem to have worked primarily for export - his name was recorded in the archives of the Antwerp merchant W. Forchondt in 1669 - and most of his production is in Spanish hands today. Other models for Willemsen included Jan Brueghel the Elder, Frans Francken, and the Le Nain brothers. He died in Antwerp in 1672.