(Antwerp 1616–1677)
Venus and Cupid,
signed indistinctly centre left: . T...,
oil on canvas, 145 x 107 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection United Kingdom, until 2020

We are grateful to Bert Schepers of the Rubenianum, Antwerp for suggesting the attribution of the present painting to Pieter Thijs on the basis of photographs.

He compares the handling of Venus in the current composition to the figure of Princess Herse of Athens, particularly in terms of her braided hair and her feet, depicted in Thijs’s Mercury and Herse at the Kulturstiftung Dessau-Wörlitz, signed in full and dated 1664: Peter Thys fecit. 1664. Schepers further notes similarities between the present work and Achilles recognized by Ulysses at the Court of Lycomedes in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, inv. no. NM 662.

Pieter Thijs was among the last of van Dyck’s pupils, with a career spanning not only the glories of the Flemish Baroque, but also encompassed by the Gouden Eeuw, working for prestigious patrons such as the Archduke Leopold William of Austria, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch court at The Hague. Admitted to the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp in 1644, he served as treasurer, councillor, and coordinator of charities. Seventy years after the master’s death, the art historian Jean-Baptiste Descamps lauded Thijs’s compositions for possessing ‘a lot of spirit, vibrant colours, and a lively manner’.