A rare work by Dutch Golden Age artist Gerrit Dou will be auctioned at Christie’s on December 2.
The Flute Player (ca. 1636) is one of the few known paintings by the Dutch master Gerrit Dou. While a master in his own right, Dou is perhaps much better known than his mentor Rembrandt, who is considered one of the most popular artists from that era. Still, among the purveyors of the Dutch Golden Age (a period between 1588 to 1672 where art and science flourished in the Netherlands), Gerrit Dou remains an important figure.
The oil painting features an array of objects – a globe, an open book, a violin, and an hourglass, to name a few. However, the subject is the flautist, who is seated on a chair while playing the flute. He is looking directly at the viewer – a feature common in most Dutch paintings of the era. The Flute Player was once owned by the Fifth Earl of Carysfort and passed down in his family for over 125 years.
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It is now heading to the auction block on December 2nd at the “Old Masters Evening Sale” at Christie’s London. The painting is carrying a pre-sale estimate of £2 million to £3 million ($2.6 million–$4 million). Some believe the work has the potential to set a new record for Gerrit Dou. The current recordholder, which sold for $7.1 million at Christie’s in London, carried an estimate of $3 million – $5 million. Maja Markovic, who will head the auction, said: “The unwavering interest in Dou’s paintings across the centuries is confirmed by this work. Its appearance on the market for the first time in well over a century offers a new generation of collectors the opportunity to acquire an early masterpiece by an artist whose extraordinary command of the brush continues to mesmerise viewers today just as it did connoisseurs four centuries ago.”
