Taubman bought it for $ 1.76M including premium in the sale of the Safra collection at Sotheby's on January 26, 2011, far below the estimate, which certainly explains the caution of the auction house in its new lower estimate: $ 800K. This charming genre painting does not however lack merit.
The artist, Hendrick Sorgh, is little known but nevertheless had a successful career in Rotterdam. His scenes of peasant taverns are inspired by his contemporary Teniers the Younger. His active participation in local life leads him to observe the bourgeois in their vast interiors, with kindness but without the theatrical dynamism of Jan Steen, for example.
The oil on canvas 68 x 82 cm from the Safra and Taubman collections, painted in 1661, shows a group of young people busy playing music. A man plays the theorbo and another the violin, and a woman sings. Their group includes another young woman whose dreamy attitude, captured by the emotion of the music, is seconded by the symbol of the virginal passion, the bird in its cage.
The theme of the musical group, rare in the art of Sorgh, is more common by Teniers.
SOLD for $ 610K including premium