Pieter van Bloemen
(Antwerp 1657 - 1720 )

"Horse trading"

oil on canvas
12.9" x 19.29"    33 x 49 cm

        € 31.000.00         

Pieter van Bloemen, the brother of Jan Frans was born in 1657 and died in 1720. He was in Rome first in 1685 and remained there  until 1694, specializing in painting horses and riders, not as much in the context of the traditional battle scene but in that of real horsemanship. He introduced  figures in some of his brother's paintings.

There are several works certainly by him in the Rospigliosi collection, there are few dated works: on in York bares the date 1697 another in the National Gallery in Rome is dated 1708 and another in Dresden 1710. The Equestrian portrait of John, Duke of Marlborough which is signed in full and dated 1714 is a late work and an example of the official portraiture to which Pieter devoted the last years of his career; we can find his works in the principal Roman collections and some are still in the Gallery of the Academy of St. Luke in the Pallavicini Gallery and the Vatican Museums.

Pieter worked in a Bambocciata vein using a great variety of Roman landscape settings for his compositions, like the Via dei Cerchi, the ruins of the Forum or Roman farm houses, and always including horses and riders, very much what we find in this work where the Horse market is placed in a landscape with ruins that are the background to the main event, horses and riders in the market.

This is a very typical work of Pieter, combining  the main   oeuvres of his career, the magnificent lighting and chiaroscuro evokes the animated market at dawn.