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

Oil on panel, 26.5 x 21.5 cm, signed lower right on the barrel: PQ. Z. Kovács, "Lappangó műtárgyaink VI. Előkerült művek" [Our Hidden Artworks VI. Re-emerged Artworks], Artmagazin 4 (2006/2), 24-25. Red chalk on vellum, 133 x 144 mm, signed lower right: PQuast 1637, inv. no. 1961.65.12. See E. Haverkamp-Begemann and A-M. S. Logan, European Drawings and Watercolors in the Yale University Art Gallery: 1500-1900, New Haven 1970, 220, no. 399, pi. 228; S. Boorsch and J. Marciari, Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven-London, 2006, 148-49, no. 46. We see him as the main figure of the Tavern Scene at the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, just as he is drinking (oil on panel, 34.8 x 26 cm); in one of Brouwer's paintings at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich, with pipe in hand; as an allegorical figure in Smell (inv. no. 2095, oil on panel, 21 x 19 cm); and on a page from Brouwer's sketchbook at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Besançon, he appears in an angle extremely similar to Quast's peasant sitting around (pen and ink drawing on paper, 15x21 cm). See G. Knüttel, Adriaen Brouwer. The Master and His Work, The Hague 1962, 84, fig. 44; 140, fig. 91; 170, fig. 117. Inv. no. 133, oil on panel, 29.1 x 36.3 cm. See K. Renger, Adriaen Brouwer und das niederländische Bauerngenre 1600-1660, exh. cat., Alte Pinakothek, Munich 1986, 65-66, no. 32, fig. 45. Oil on panel, 30.5 x 40.1 cm. Christie's Amsterdam, 10 October 1997, lot 128. Archives of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 1944, unnumbered. The picture is the fifth lot on the list, dimensions 34.5 x 31 cm. Its media and technique were not indicated. There is no photo available of the painting.

—The collection also contained significant Italian, Spanish, and nineteenthcentury French paintings. A few years ago, the BBC made a documentary on the history of the Bedő Collection. The fate of these artworks, stowed away to England, can be reconstructed on the basis of documents introduced in this film. Unfortunately, the Quast painting in question is not among those works of which location is presently known. I was unable to find a trace of the picture in the available art historical databases, image archives, or registers of art dealers. The works of Quast can be compared most with Brouwer's early works, a part of which is not even counted among his oeuvre by now. See W. von Bode, Adriaen Brouwer. Sein Leben und seine Werke, Berlin 1924, figs. 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 20; Feather Carver (Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten Holländischen Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. III, Esslingen a. N. and Paris 1910, no. 189), in the collection of the Louvre, and attributed to Brouwer by Hofstede de Groot, is already attributed to Quast in the museum catalogue: Catalogue sommaire illustré des peintures du Musée du Louvre, vol. I, Ecoles flamandes et hollandaise, Paris 1979, 109.