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
Commission Shop Company (BAV), 25th Auction, 1971, lot 194. Quast painted the motif of the posing officer in countless variations. The typical posture of the figure can be readily compared to the similar officers of Willem Duyster and Simon Kick. In Quast's works, these figures appear almost as farcical burlesque characters. For instance, Barracks with officers examining the spoils of war and warming soldiers, oil on panel, 46 x 52.5 cm, Dorotheum, Vienna, 13-14 April 1943, lot 109, Soldiers in the guard-room, oil on copper, 50 x 69 cm, Frederik Muller, Amsterdam, 25 November 1924, lot 29. See Beeiden van een strijd. Oorlog en kunst vóór de Vrede van Munster 1621-1648, ed. M. P. van Maarseveen, J. W. L. Hilkhuijsen, andj. Dane, exh. cat., Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, Zwolle and Delft 1998, 197, 248, fig. 49. I. Németh examined the connections of this painting, among others, with respect to the iconographie relationships of the musical company as artistic theme: "Musical Company. Remarks on some 17 lh century Dutch paintings," Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 90-91 (1999), 116ff. Inv. no. A 1298. P. van Thiel, All the paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1976, 459. Quast follows a similar compositional scheme in another work, held in a private collection, which was most recently put on auction at Christie's in London (7 July 1995, lot 53). Oil on panel, 26.5 x 19 cm. Signed upper right: P.Quast 1636. Ernst Museum Auctions II, 26 November 1917, lot 107, pl. XXXII; following the 1917 sale, for several decades, the work lay hidden, until it again appeared on the international art market: Sotheby's, London, 7 December 1994, lot 11; and Sotheby's, New York, 22 May 1997, lot 127. Inv. no. 591. Oil on panel, 37 x 29.2 cm, signed bottom left of centre: PQuast. See B. Steinborn, Katalog zbiorow malarstwa niderlandzkiego, Muzeum Narodowe we Wroclawiu, Wroclaw 1973, 70. Oil on panel, 45 x 61.6 cm, signed centre right: PQ f. 1(6)35. Christie's, London, 21 July 1972, lot 147; 31 October 1997, lot 27; 28 October 1998, lot 200; Lempertz, Cologne, 17 November 2001, lot 1123; Christie's, London, 17 April 2002, lot 35; Dorotheum, Vienna, 2 October 2002, lot 93. Z. Kovács, "A Recently Identified 'Cavalry Skirmish' by Pieter Quast in a Hungarian Private Collection," Codart Courant 13 (2006), 6-7. For generations, the owners of the painting recorded it as a work of Palamedes Palamedesz. This attribution was also confirmed a few years ago by an examination carried out by the Museum of Fine Arts. Oil on panel, 80 x 130 cm, signed low r er right: P.Quast f. On verso, vignette from an old collection with the number 37. As an example, we might mention the battlescene from a foreign private collection, which also provides a good analogy from the aspects of motifs and detail forms. Oil on panel, 36 x 49 cm, signed lower centre: Palamedes Palamedesz.
