Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 104. (Budapest, 2006)
ZOLTÁN KOVÁCS: "The Witty Pieter Quast": The Works of an Amsterdam Master in Hungary Then and Now
also makes itself felt in his work presenting the Sweeper. With the minor modification of the figure he adapted the theme he borrowed from Adriaen van de Venne according to his own preferences with small modifications, which he then painted quite visibly in the more rough, slightly detailed style of BrouwerA Lying hidden for decades in various Hungarian private collections, a few years ago the Quast piece which was first registered in the 1950s, when it was put under state protection, and which depicts a peasant sitting about in a wine cellar, re-emerged (fig. 12). 58 The round face of the figure wearing a flat cap and with an oedematous countenance is illuminated by floating light, which stands on a board lying on a barrel that functions as a small table, in the company of a jug of wane. The lamp glazes over the dark cellar with its warm, reddish glow, glittering here and there over the outlines of the figure. The man with a straw r berry-coloured rhinophymic nose has his right hand propped on his hip, while he reaches under his waistcoat with his left. We can find this characteristic figure of the fat peasant sitting about on a barrel that raises a smile in other works of Quast, too. A close analogy is found in his chalk drawingpreserved in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery of a couple of peasants (fig. 13). 59 Quast could have borrowed the amusing motif of the man sitting on a cask, with flat cap and dull stare above all from Brouwer, 60 but this figure also crops up many times in the works of Adriaen van Ostade, generally in a crowded company. We see him as the protagonist of the Tavern Scene in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, with a wine-jug in hand, 61 while in the composition, A Tavern Interior with Dancing and Revelling Peasants, he has withdrawn into a corner, in the background of the picture. 6: Quast has made his figure ridiculous by exaggerating the details of his exterior, which are in any case not too attractive: the "no-neck", "pancake-faced", figure of the red-nosed, toothless peasant most certainly also struck the contemporaneous viewer as entertaining. Finally, we cannot neglect to mention a Quast painting which had belonged to the former Budapest collection of Rudolf Bedő. Beyond the fact that the picture existed, we unfortunately know precious little about it. The most significant pieces of the Bedő Collection, some forty pictures, were transported to London in 1944, to escape the German Nazi occupation, with the aid of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Quast's work entitled "Marchers with a Carriage in the Back" appeared on the list of artworks sent abroad, alongside the works of such Netherlandish masters as, e.g., David Teniers the Younger, Pieter Codde, Aelbert Cuyp and Paulus BriL 63 Subsequent to World War II, the portion of the Bedő Collection that arrived to England w 7 as placed under ownership of the British state, in accordance with a bilateral agreement. It was safeguarded in a bank vault for a short time, then was put on auction. A few pieces of the
